Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, August 1957 (British Edition)

Salute from Mike Shayne

Three issues of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE have been published at the moment of writing this fourth editorial. It is thus much too early to have a full picture of how the redhead’s own magazine is going, but first reports indicate that you like Mike almost as well as I do And Shayne has been my alter-ego for lo, these many years

Especially heartening are the letters of commendation and the requests for subscriptions that are arriving with every mail. One of you, who wants her MSMM every month, expressed a hope that hers was not the letter that would “break the mailman’s back” We have, of course, no wish to cause any slipped discs among faithful letter-carriers. The most we hope for. in this line, is to cause, perhaps, a few temporary spinal curvatures, and it begins to look, with your co-operation, as if we are on the road whose ending will find MSMM at the top of its class

Once more, in his fourth issue, Shayne finds himself amid company calculated to keep any self-respecting private operative on his toes. His companion-novelette. To Anita — with Murder, by Vic Rodell, is a brilliant, unusual long story. Leading the shorts, we find famed science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon trying his deft hand at murder with a most unexpected twist in The Deadly Innocent, as well as crime-master Jonathan Craig, topping a star-studded list Shayne joins me in a heartfelt salute to you and the mailman for making his success possible

Brett Halliday

Who Shot the Duke?

by Brett Halliday[1]

The red-headed detective should never have taken on the job of running down “Duke” Ferrell’s killer. But two of Miami’s most glamorous ladies were desperate to beat the police to the solution. So it was Shayne’s assignment to find out—

I

The lady on the telephone had a warm, pleasant, genteel-sexy voice, despite overtones of strain. Her name, she said, was Lois Malcolm, and Shayne didn’t know her from Eve. Then she added, “I used to be Lois Craig. Perhaps you remember me?”

Shayne remembered her. There had been a time, some years earlier, when Lois Craig was as well known around Miami as, say, Jinx Falkenberg in New York, or Marilyn Monroe in Hollywood. Not that Lois Craig was an actress or a radio-television commentator, though she had made her share of appearances, in various functions, before both live and living-room audiences.

Lois Craig was one of those comely, healthy American girls of good background who is universally liked and gets into every sort of social activity, from beauty contests and tennis tourneys, to amateur theatricals and benefit drives. During, and immediately after, the war, Lois Craig had been almost a Miami fixture. As such, Shayne had known her, as such, she had known him.

He said, “It s been quite a while. What can I do for you, Lo — Mrs. Malcolm?” Though they had moved through the same world for a while, their orbits were far different.

She said, “Mr. Shayne, I’m in momentary expectation of becoming involved in what I’m very much afraid is murder. And, right now, I simply can’t be mixed up in anything of the sort.”

Shayne whistled softly to himself. The idea of Lois Craig — even of a much older Lois Malcolm — getting mixed up in anything like murder was a little like learning that Princess Margaret of England had been arrested on a vagrancy charge.

He said, “Mrs. Malcolm, if the police are already at work, I don’t know that there’s much to be done. I assure you, the wisest course is to give them the fullest possible cooperation.”

“That’s just it, Mike,” said Lois Malcolm, the trouble deep in her voice. “I don’t know whether the police know about it yet. I had an appointment to go swimming with this — with a certain gentleman, at ten this morning. I was to pick him up at his cottage. But when I got there...” Shayne could almost visualise her shudder.

He looked up at brown-haired, warmly attractive Lucy Hamilton, who had wandered in from her monitor-board in the outer office. His heavy, red brows went up a notch, and he frowned briefly at the telephone in his hand, said, “Yes, Mrs. Malcolm...?” into the mouthpiece.

She said, “Sorry...” and laughed, nervously and without mirth. Then, “My — date was lying on the living-room carpet, shot through the head.”

“Could it have been suicide?” asked Shayne.

“I... didn’t... see... a... weapon,” she replied slowly, wretchedly.

“Hmmph!” Shayne’s thumb and forefinger tugged at the lobe of his left ear. “What do you want me to do?” he asked bluntly.

“I don’t know,” she said, a note of despair shaking the control of her voice. “My husband is in New York. If he finds out...”

“Did anyone see you enter or leave your friend’s apartment?” the redhead asked.

“I don’t know — I’ve been trying to remember,” said Lois Malcolm. “I wasn’t expecting to encounter anything like it when I went in, so I didn’t notice. Afterward, I was too upset, I’m afraid.”

“And you haven’t notified the police?” Shayne inquired. He didn’t like the sound of it — most of all, he found himself disliking the idea of the Lois Craig he remembered so pleasantly, and so vividly, being mixed up in such a mess. He added, “Let me have the name and address — I’d better get out there and see if there is anything I can do. Where can I reach you afterward?”

She told him, then said, simply and sincerely, “Thanks, Michael Shayne. You don’t know what this means to me. I’ll see to it that you’re well paid. It’s worth everything to me!”

“It may be worth exactly nothing,” the detective told her frankly. “I’ll try to see you within an hour. We can talk it over then. Until I get there, don’t talk to anyone — not even the police. Do you understand?”

“I understand — thanks again.” She hung up.

Shayne pushed the telephone away and said to Lucy, “Where have I heard the name Malcolm lately — any ideas, angel?”

She stood there in the doorway, a Christmas-calendar figure, and tapped a full lower lip with the eraser and a pencil. “It does sound familiar, Mike. Malcolm — something about a big business deal...”

The redhead snapped his fingers and got to his feet. He gave her a quick, grateful, half-embrace, then said, “It’s that big proxy fight for control of the Waldex Corporation, angel. A character named Malcolm — Donald Malcolm — is chairman of the board for Waldex. One of these corporation cannibals — name of Borden — is out to take it away from him through the stockholders. I read about it in the Sunday papers only last week.”

“I saw the headlines.” Lucy didn’t appear especially interested. Then, with a nod toward the ’phone, “What was that all about, Mike?”

“I don’t know — yet,” said the redhead, “but unless Lois Malcolm is a honey-voiced liar, she’s in a hell of a mess. She cut quite a swathe in Miami before you got here, angel. Used to be a swell kid. So hold the fort till I get back, okay?”

He reached for his hat.

Harlan Ferrell, known to intimates as “the Duke,” did not belie the èlegance of his nickname, even in death. His cottage over-looked a superb sweep of emerald palms, of coral-white winter mansions, silver beach and sapphire-blue water. His oriental, silk-brocaded dressing gown must have cost high in three figures. Even the bathing trunks worn underneath it were of some gaudy, de luxe material. He lay on his back on the softest of deep-blue Turkish carpets, and his head rested between an armchair and a sofa of oyster-white leather, held in place by nails with golden heads.

However, thanks to the hole in the middle of his forehead, Harlan “the Duke” Ferrell was no longer relishing his lush surroundings.

Shayne looked down at the corpse and thought, irrelevantly, of the little girl of the nursery rhyme who “had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead” — only this wasn’t a nursery rhyme, it wasn’t a little girl, and it wasn’t a curl. This was reality, it was a dark, handsome, very dead man, and the “curl” was a hole, made by a bullet.

Outside of corpse and redhead, there were four others in the room. Three of them were cops — the uniformed patrolman who had been first on the scene when the alarm went out, Len Sturgis, the hulking, immensely tall ace of Chief of Police Will Gentry’s Homicide Bureau, and Garrity, Sturgis’ partner and chauffeur. The other person present was a small, rather twitchy little man with double-bags under his eyes and an immense, corvine nose. He called himself Seton and said he was Mr. Ferrell’s manservant. It was he who had found the body and reported it to the police.

At the moment, however, while awaiting the arrival of the Medical Examiner’s crew and the fingerprint and photographic teams, Len Sturgis appeared more interested in Shayne and the reason for his presence so quickly on the scene, rather than in the witness. He asked, sharply, “Mike, how come you’re on this so fast?”

“I don’t even know that I am on it,” the redhead replied, lighting a cigarette. “How does it look to you, Len?”

“Too quick to tell,” was the equivocal reply. Then, “Who tipped you off, Mike? Seton, here, only reported finding the body twenty minutes ago.”

“For all I know,” said Shayne blandly, “it might have been the murderer.” Then, suppressing a grin, “Don’t get yourself all lathered up, Len — it’s not worth it. If it was the murderer, I promise you’ll be the very first to know — after me, of course.”

Sturgis growled and took two steps forward, his fists clenched so tightly against his sides that his knuckles showed custard yellow. He said, between his teeth, “Shayne, I ought to knock some sense into you — and some of the non-co-operation out! This is a murder, Mike, and I’m not standing for any of your monkey-shines.”

“Thank you, Len,” said the red-head with the sweetest smile he could muster on his craggy, deeply furrowed face. “Simmer down, man. At least, you had the kindness to tell me it’s not a suicide — which is what I really came over here to find out.” Shayne turned on his heel and began to march out of the room, to be halted briefly by Sturgis’ bellow. “Where in hell do you think you’re going, Shayne?” the Homicide sleuth roared.

“Oh!” the detective replied lightly. “I’m on my way to find out if my client is a murderer.”

“Your hat, sir,” said Seton, moving forward obsequiously.

Shayne was smiling to himself as he passed the fingerprint boys on their way to work. Sliding under the wheel of his sedan and putting it under way, he concentrated on the problem that lay ahead of him at Lois Craig Malcolm’s.

She received him at the door of a rambling, expensive-looking, pseudo-Italian villa. She wore a bright flowered print that italicised. the bright blue of her eyes and the softly glowing bronze tones of her skin. She was of medium height, and the years seemed, if anything, to have added to, rather than detracted from, the magnetic elements of a trim, yet wholly feminine, figure. Her face was alert with intelligence, and she looked hardly a day over twenty-five. Her comely features were framed by dark-blonde hair, cut in an artfully artless short-Italian style. Shayne would have recognised her anywhere as Lois Craig.

She said, extending a hand, “Hello, Mike — thank goodness you’re here!” Then she motioned him into the house.

She led the way to a large and comfortable living room and poured them both brandy from a portable bar. Handing him his glass, she said, “You see? I remembered.” Then, “I hope I did the right thing in calling you instead of the police, Mike Shayne.”

He put down his glass, half-empty, and said, “Amen to that, Mrs. Malcolm. You are Mrs. Donald Malcolm, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she told him. “I wish you’d call me Lois. The other sounds so formal.”

“Thank you,” he said, “but I wasn’t thinking of our relationship, Lois — I was wondering how your possible involvement in the murder of Harlan Ferrell might affect your husband’s chances in this proxy battle he has coming up.”

Lois Malcolm ran well-manicured fingers through her short hair. She said, “Mike, I just don’t dare think about that.” She paused, then lifted her head with a spark of defiant pride and added, “I know I’ve been a plain, idiotic, damned fool, and I’ve got no right to ask for help out of a situation I created for myself. If only I’d had sense enough to stay away from Duke Ferrell! I knew what he was, well enough.”

She got hold of herself and went on, her voice low, “At the very worst, though, I’ve been an idiot, not a criminal. It’s for Donald’s sake that I’m hoping against hope my name — and his — can be kept out of the newspapers. He’ll be crucified, if it gets out.”

Shayne studied her. It was difficult for him to envisage this suntanned, competent, obviously intelligent woman playing the fool with a character like Duke Ferrell. For his memory of Lois Craig, such a vision was sickening. He said, evading the issue for the moment, “One thing, before we go any further — if the answer is yes, it never will go any further. Did you shoot Duke Ferrell?”

“I did not,” she said firmly. “As I told you over the ’phone, somebody had already killed poor Duke when I got there this morning.”

“Any idea who might have done it?” he asked her.

Lois Malcolm shook her head. “A better question would be, do I have any idea who might not have done it?” she countered, a faint smile relieving the savage cynicism of her remark. “I know this sounds impossible, but I have a perfectly marvellous husband, even if he is in New York, and I’m here — and Duke Ferrell was undoubtedly the biggest heel I have ever met. Mind you, Mike, I’ve met some beauts. He was a man without honour, without principle, without a single thought or ambition or desire beyond the gratification of his own senses, and the filling of his own pocketbook.”

“Sounds like a real charm-boy,” said the redhead, putting down his glass, empty. “Just what was his attraction for a woman like you?”

“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “It was what he wasn’t, rather than what he was, I suppose. Now that Duke’s dead, I can’t even seem to explain it to myself. But a woman can grow awfully tired of nobility, Mike, especially when she has no children, and her husband’s business keeps him away from her a lot of the time. It can become quite a burden.”

“I suppose so,” said Shayne, not trying to mask his disappointment. He got to his feet, tugged his jacket into place, said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Mike,” she said, coming close to him and looking up at him appealingly, “try not to hate me, won’t you? I want you to do your best to keep my name out of the papers until Duke Ferrell’s murderer is found.” She moved toward a secretary, on which a tan leather handbag rested. “If I give you a thousand now...” she began, reaching for it.

“Not yet,” Shayne told her. “I don’t really know enough about this business to accept it as a case.”

“What you’re trying to tell me,” she said, confronting him again, “is that you don’t think I’m worth helping. In that case, Mike, I don’t blame you — but think of my husband.”

“Damn it!” he said. “I used to like you as a kid, Lois...”

“I’m not a kid any more, Mike,” she said quietly. “I’m a woman... a woman in a jam, and I need help.”

Reluctantly, he agreed to do what he could. Before leaving, he paid a visit to a small washroom, to which she directed him, immediately off the front hall. On the back of the basin was a cellophane cigar wrapper, bearing an orange-and-blue emblem. The detective flushed it down the toilet.

II

Shayne was frowning as he drove away from Lois Malcolm’s winter residence. The bathroom he had visited, like the front hall and the living room, showed every sign of spotless servicing — with fresh towels and soap, even a fresh flower in a tiny vase, set in a wall-niche. Somebody had unwrapped a cigar there that very morning. It seemed highly unlikely that Lois Malcolm smoked cigars — just as it seemed unlikely that she would often use a bathroom obviously designed for visitors to the pseudo-Spanish mansion. Her own bathroom would adjoin her bedroom, elsewhere in the house.

There was another element in the cellophane wrapper that troubled the detective. He knew that orange-and-blue label — one of his New York clients had smoked cigars bearing a similar device and had presented Mike with a box of them at the conclusion of a case. Cigars with that label were custom-made, of the finest Havana and Connecticut leaf, for the exclusive New York Racquets Club.

He stopped in one of the great, white, modern hotels that make a wedding-cake festival of Miami Beach in the sunshine and visited the office of the manager, whom he knew, for a look at a copy of the New York Social Register.

Donald Malcolm was listed, as was Lois Craig Malcolm. There were, he noted, no children of their marriage. Malcolm’s clubs included the University, the Metropolitan, the Union League, and the New York Racquets. The detective scowled and tugged at the lobe of his left ear.

Shayne had lunch with an old friend — long, lanky, sardonic Timothy Rourke, crack crime reporter for the Miami News. Over a fine mess of pompano at a restaurant across the Bay, he learned that the late Duke Ferrell had been, by repute, one of the most successful all-round ladies’ men, gigolos and heels to operate in Dade County of recent years.

“There won’t be many tears shed over his demise this morning,” said the reporter, “unless he’s still got some dames on the hook he didn’t finish milking. He could really turn it on when there was a buck in view. The word is, Duke Ferrell put his heart into his work.”

“What’s the latest on it from Headquarters?” the detective asked.

Tim Rourke shrugged. “Who knows?” he countered. “Probably nothing, since Sturgis isn’t issuing any statements yet. They gave that houseman of the Duke’s a sweating, I hear. Seems he had a record out West — petty larceny, a spot of blackmail. This was before he went to work for the Duke. They’re still working him over.”

“Thanks,” said Shayne. He was relieved to discover that, apparently, the reporter didn’t yet know he was professionally interested in the murder. Over the coffee, he said casually, “Tim, I’ve been reading about this proxy fight that’s coming up over Waldex. Can you fill me in on any of it?”

Rourke put down his coffee cup, mopped his lips, then cocked his long head on one side. “Mike,” he said, “it’s one of those things that happens in business ever so often — like the Robert R. Young-Grand Central thing a few years back, or the Louis Wolf son tussle with Montgomery-Ward. Waldex is a solid, established industrial complex of manufacturing concerns, dealing mostly with timber and plastic by-products. It has enough tax assets and goodwill, to say nothing of cash reserves, to make hungry people’s mouths water.”

“Hmmph!” said Shayne. “What about the management?”

Again Tim Rourke shrugged knobby shoulders. He said, “I don’t know why you’re interested, but it’s interesting stuff, all right. I’ve been boning up on it for a feature series on crimes in business. There have been no complaints against the Waldex management — at least, there were none I knew of until the Borden group opened fire last year and got the old propaganda mills grinding. The employees got regular raises and fat Christmas bonuses, and all the retirement and health benefits and services the law allows. The stock-holders got their dividends every quarter, like clockwork. So, no complaints.”

“Then what’s the beef now?” the redhead asked.

“The usual,” replied Rourke. “This mob that wants in claims the management is ‘unprogressive’ — whatever that means. They claim they’ll offer a stock split with no decrease in dividends per share, along with an efficiency programme that will cut costs and produce a higher corporative profit. It’s a straight play to win the stockholders’ support — ‘we’ll double your dough, kids’ — that’s all.”

“Have they got a chance?” Shayne inquired.

“A programme like that always has a chance, the mental processes of stockholders being what they are,” said the reporter. “I’d say it looked like a dead heat to date. Of course, the payoff won’t come until next month, when they hold the annual stockholders’ meeting.”

“Where are they holding it?” Shayne asked.

“You are a square!” said the reporter, shaking his head sadly. “They’re holding it right here in Miami, two days after Christmas. That’s when you’ll see the fireworks. But why the interest, Mike? I should think you’d be hotter on to-day’s corpse — this Duke Ferrell. There’s one that may blossom angles in all directions — to say nothing of curves.” He made the eternal, hour glass gesture. “Right down your alley, Mike, if you can latch on to a payday.”

“It sounds unsavoury,” said Shayne, beckoning the waiter for the check. Tim Rourke regarded him with open disbelief.

“I must have gone deaf,” said the reporter. “Anyway, my ears are deceiving me. Mike Shayne finds a murder unsavoury? It can’t be!”

“Shut up, you large goon,” said the redhead good-naturedly, as he opened his wallet to pay for the meal. “But keep me briefed on what happens.” He got rid of the reporter outside the restaurant. By his wristwatch, it was past two o’clock, and time to be on his own way.

For the pending stockholders’ meeting, the Waldex Corporation had reserved quarters on two floors of one of the larger and newer Miami Beach hotels. Shayne walked in, examined the panorama of dignified hustle in which he found himself and pushed his fedora, irreverently, far back on his red head. If he was thrown out, as he rather expected to be, there was a certain reassurance in the prospect of being given the heave in gentlemanly fashion.

Thus morally fortified, the detective approached a young goddess whose serene sunbronsed perfection was well revealed by her white sunback dress, whose hair was a dark blonde, streaked with gold.

He asked to see Donald Malcolm and was informed, charmingly, “Mr. Malcolm is in New York.”

Shayne said, leaning closer to her over the bloated wooden kidney that served the goddess as an altar, “Honey, you get word to him that Mr. Ferrell — Mr. Harlan Ferrell — wants to see him right away. I’ll wait.”

He sat down on a sofa and began whistling tunelessly through his bridgework. He knew he was taking the risk of making a fool of himself. The cigar wrapper on the basin in Lois Malcolm’s guest lavatory could have been left there in any number of ways. But the redhead felt certain Lois had lied to him lavishly — save in the matter of the Duke’s murder.

He had not been sure she was lying until he found the wrapper — when her whole story fell apart. He was willing to wager every bit of his hard-won experience in people that Lois Craig Malcolm had not been having an affair with the corpse. It was far more likely, to his present way of thinking, that she might have killed the Duke herself, given what she felt to be a sufficient motive.

When she spoke about her husband, Lois had not been lying — she had radiated an aura of affection. Shayne could think of only one motive sufficient to make Lois falsely confess herself to be an idiotic, faithless female — her love for her husband. This, coupled with the cigar wrapper, suggested to the redhead that Lois might have been lying about his being in New York.

Thus, Shayne wanted to see Donald Malcolm — and to do so, required blasting tactics, like his use of the dead man’s name. Malcolm might not yet know Ferrell was dead, but he must know his wife was dealing — had been dealing — with the Duke. He continued to wait — still whistling through his teeth.

He did not have to wait long. After eleven minutes, by his wristwatch, the detective was approached by a husky looking young man who bore the appearance of having played football in college and played it well. He regarded the red-head speculatively, then said, “Mr. Ferrell? Follow me, please...”

III

Shayne followed his large guide through a succession of corridors, down three flights in a private elevator, and was finally ushered into a suite overlooking the ocean. On carpet centre, stood a quietly handsome, compact-looking man, who appeared to be about the detective’s own age. He was clad in short-sleeved open shirt and dark-brown slacks. He said, “Beat it, Ben. If I want you, I’ll call.”

When Ben was gone, Malcolm pulled the wrapper of a fresh cigar, without offering Shayne a smoke — by its emblem, the perfecto came from the New York Racquets Club. He lit it deliberately, studying the detective over the flame of his lighter. Then he said, “All right, you swine, I don’t know how you found out I was here — Lois was supposed to take care of you this morning. But since you are here — state your demands and get out!”

Shayne picked up the cigar-wrapper the industrialist had just discarded. He said quietly, “Malcolm, I found one like this in your wife’s guest lavatory this morning. She had called me earlier, asking be to do what I could to keep her name clear of the murder of — Duke Ferrell. She told me you were in New York, but I decided she was lying and—”

“Duke Ferrell!” Malcolm exploded. “But — Duke Ferrell murdered? Then who in hell are you, and what do you want of me?” He looked close to the detonation point as he moved a step nearer the redhead.

“I’m Michael Shayne, private detective,” said Shayne. “I’m trying to help your wife — I used to know her slightly, just after the war. To help her, I’ve got to know more about the trouble she’s in. To do that, I’ve got to get the truth out of her — I think she’s fogging things up with the idea of saving your good name. So, I’ve come to you.”

Malcolm, his face white, sat down heavily on a sofa. He said, “Are you levelling about Ferrell being murdered? I haven’t seen a paper or listened to a news broadcast since...” He trailed off.

“Why don’t you call your wife and check with her?” the detective asked. “She’s been beating her brains out to protect you — she even tried to convince me she was having a romance with that gigolo.”

“Thanks,” said Malcolm, again studying the detective for a long moment. He reached for the telephone, got Lois, talked to her briefly, succinctly, then hung up and said, “You seem to be levelling, according to lists. Incidentally, your sleuthing is damned good if you ran me down here so quick. Not many people know where I am.” He paused, then added, frowning. “Do the police know who shot Ferrell?”

“Not unless they’ve moved faster than light,” Shayne told him. “Malcolm, I know you’re a busy man, but I’d like to know what lies behind your wife’s connection with the Duke. I think it may be important. I assure you, I shan’t talk.”

This time, the industrialist did offer Shayne a cigar, which the redhead refused in favour of a cigarette. Malcolm relighted his own perfecto and said, “All right, Shayne, I guess I owe you the truth — Lois tells me you’re one hundred percent — but it’s not going to be easy.”

He paused, but, when Shayne said nothing, went on with, “This is a battle to the death I’m involved in, Shayne. Control of more than a quarter of a billion dollars worth of business is at stake. I have given my life to Waldex, Shayne. Except during the war, when I was in the Navy, I never had a job with any other firm.

“For the last nine years, the directors have voted me their chairman,” he added with a trace of pride. “I believe I have been a good company leader. The figures bear me out. We have never missed a dividend or had a single serious labour dispute. Now the Borden interests are moving in, trying to take control away from my friends and myself and make a financier’s football out of Waldex. Naturally, I’m fighting.”

“Just what are these Borden interests?” the detective asked.

“In my book,” said Malcolm, “the Borden interests are a group of financial sharks and jackals, who use their resources to prey on established corporations. Once they have obtained control, they manipulate stock and lower production quality, make a killing and move on. They leave a corporation sucked hollow, like a fly in a spider’s web.”

“I see,” said Shayne. “What do they say about you?”

Malcolm made a wry face and said, “Well, I suppose ‘stick-in-the-mud’ or ‘fogie’ are about the two kindest things they are saying of me. But that’s only one angle of this situation.”

He paused, then said, “Shayne, I’m placing myself in your hands when I tell you this. Any whisper of scandal before the voting, no matter how unfounded, and I’m through. Unfortunately” — he made the wry face a second time — “this scandal is all too well founded. You see, Shayne, almost a dozen years ago, right after the war, I made use of the company’s reserve fund — quite illegally, I may add.

“I didn’t go to jail for it — on the contrary, the theft was the basis of such subsequent success as I have had. I was impelled to make use of the money because Henry Waldemar, the founder and then president of Waldex, absolutely refused to permit the reserve fund to be used for corporate expansion.

“It was my firm belief that, if we didn’t expand then, we were bound to go under. As it turned out, events proved me right.” He paused to frown and shake his head. “Within three or four years, I was chairman of the board and Henry Waldemar had been put out to stud.

“He never thought I was reliable, after my criminal career of one crime.” Malcolm made a deprecatory gesture. “So he had me write out a record of my technical felony. He never told anyone, but he used to warn me that, if I ever went against company policy, he’d not hesitate to use it.”

“What about the Statute of Limitations?” Shayne asked.

Malcolm shrugged. “Meaningless in this instance,” he said, “Granted, I’m no longer vulnerable to prosecution — but the effect of such a disclosure, coloured by the Borden propaganda machine, would be disastrous. I’d be out like the proverbial lamp. That I could take — what I don’t like is the idea of the Borden group being in.”

“What makes you think they don’t already have this paper?” the redhead asked, dousing his cigarette.

“If they’d had it, they’d have used it,” Malcolm said simply. “We’ve been showing real progress the last month or so. That’s why I agreed to let Lois handle things as soon as we got a tip that Ferrell was willing to market that damned document.”

Shayne said, frowning, “Here’s one of the several things that are bothering me — how did a gigolo like Duke Ferrell ever get his hooks on an item like this confession of yours?”

“A pure fluke!” exclaimed Malcolm, slapping the desk against which he was leaning. “A damned unlucky fluke for me. Ferrell was Henry Waldemar’s chauffeur, the last four years of his life. Like a number of lonely, wealthy old men, Waldemar grew to lean on him. He trusted him and evidently confided in him. In fact, it was the legacy the old man left him that enabled Duke to set himself up as a squire of dames.”

He paused, added unhappily, “Duke wasn’t quite as trustworthy as Henry Waldemar thought. Apparently, in the confusion following his death, Duke took the opportunity to go through the old man’s documents — for all I know, he might have been looking up the will, to see if he was mentioned. No matter — he got hold of my confession and hung on to it. When it didn’t turn up, I took it for granted Henry Waldemar had destroyed it, and heaved a sigh of relief. It wasn’t worth peanuts until this proxy fight came up. Now...” He shook his head slowly and looked out the window at the blue Atlantic.

“And now,” said Shayne drily, “Duke Ferrell has been murdered. Do you suppose this paper of yours lay behind that?”

“I don’t know — I just don’t know!” Malcolm exploded, betraying the nervousness that was consuming him. He began to pace the carpet, saying, “Who knows why a man like Ferrell is slain? He was asking for trouble.”

“And your wife,” the detective reminded him, “is in it up to her neck — on your behalf.”

“That’s the most sickening angle to the whole stinking mess!” said the industrialist, throwing his dead cigar into the wastebasket.

“It’s bad enough, my being in a jam like this — but to have Lois involved...” He stopped in front of the detective, his lips working. “Shayne, I’m glad Lois got you into this. I want you working for me, as well as for her. I’m all tied up with this proxy battle — it’s a madhouse around here, and will be until the stockholders’ meeting next month. I want you to protect Lois, where I can’t.”

He slammed his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “But that damned confession is still on the loose,” he added, “and, with a murder involved, it’s more dangerous than ever. It hasn’t turned up yet, but it will. And, Shayne, I want you to get it for me — otherwise, I’m a ruined man. You get it, and you can write your own ticket, understand? But I want you on the job!”

“You don’t know me,” said Shayne, smiling faintly.

“Maybe I don’t know you,” said Malcolm, extending a hand, “but I know men. And I’ve heard about you.”

“Okay,” The redhead took the proffered grip. “One question you haven’t answered, Malcolm — why all the secrecy about your being in Miami?”

“Just window-dressing,” said the tycoon. “Just watercress. My fellows seem to feel it’s sound tactics to keep the Borden bunch guessing. If they don’t know where I am, they may get worried that I’m somewhere else. What they don’t know won’t hurt you — that sort of thing.”

“Okay,” said the redhead. “Can I reach you here if I have to?”

Malcolm nodded. “I’ll tell Elsie, upstairs,” he said. Then, with rising eyebrows, “What are your plans, Shayne?”

“The way I look at this case,” the detective replied, “there are three items to concentrate on. One — keep your wife out of the murder. Two — keep the story of your felony out of the public prints. Three — find out who shot the Duke. Among other things, I’ll want to talk to your wife again, Malcolm.”

The industrialist nodded, then said, “Go as easy as you can on Lois, will you? I know this is murder, but I worship my wife. So...” He let it hang.

“I’ll go as easy as I can,” said Shayne.

His next step was a return visit to Lois Malcolm. Under the pressure of concealing so much of the truth, she might well have omitted, or failed to understand, some vital facet of her visit to the scene of the murder.

But, before he talked to her again, he decided on a trip back to the office, where he could check on Lucy and do some judicious telephoning, to find out the extent of police progress on the murder.

As he drove back over the Causeway, he thought again about the Malcolms. There was no denying the fact that he liked them both — superficially, at least. For this very reason, he bent over backwards, in order not to find himself playing the professional sucker because of an emotional attachment.

It was easy to understand why the Malcolms had been so pleasant to him — under the circumstances, neither of them could afford to be anything else. Lois could have called him in, as she claimed, to keep her own name out of the case or, as he suspected, to keep her husband clear of it.

But there remained two other possibilities where Lois Malcolm was concerned. She might have summoned him to protect her, because she had killed the Duke herself — or she might have called him, in a panic over the death and collapse of her deal for the record of her husband’s indiscretion, planning ultimately to use Shayne to renew the negotiations. All of these were possibilities.

Nor was Donald Malcolm himself above suspicion. Certainly, he had good motive for the murder of Duke Ferrell. Also, there was the matter of his pretense of being in New York, while he was really in Miami, plus the fact that he had visited Lois, shortly before the murder.

A totally alien factor remained — the thus-far mysterious Borden group. If Ferrell had been playing both ends against the middle, if Malcolm’s rivals had so much as sniffed out the existence of such a damaging record, the field was widened. The ramifications of the case were widening like ripples on the surface of a still pond, into which a stone had been thrown.

He walked into his office abstractedly, still seeking to sift and weigh the elements of the puzzling mystery Lois Malcolm’s phone call had plunged him into, nodded to Lucy and hung up his hat on the hanger. She had to rise and repeat, “Oh, Mr. Shayne, I’m so glad you got back early.”

That brought him out of it — Lucy hadn’t called him Mr. Shayne in years, unless there was a purpose behind it. He stopped and looked at her, wondering what she was trying to convey.

“I didn’t want to ask anyone to wait,” Lucy said, “since I knew your plans were indefinite.” Then, in a whisper, “Watch out, Mike, she looks dangerous.”

He was thus prepared to find someone in his inner office — though hardly prepared for the sort of danger Lucy was hinting at — flashing, brunette danger, with a magnificent willowy figure, simply and subtly set off by an ecru linen dress that hid nothing while deprecating all, topped by a large, green hat that brought out the soft gleam of pale emerald eyes.

Nor was he prepared for the greeting he received as his caller looked up at him directly and said in low, liquid tones, “Michael Shayne — my name is Borden — A. E. Borden. I have with me a cashier’s check made out in your name, for ten thousand dollars.”

IV

Shayne looked at his visitor with undisguised interest. It occurred to him that both sides in the proxy battle were not hesitating to employ attractive women in their efforts to obtain what was beginning to look like a decisive bit of paper — the record of Donald Malcolm’s daring and highly illegal move to save the Waldex Corporation from the postwar doldrums.

She was very attractive.

He said, “I take it you are representing the Borden group — a wife, or sister, perhaps?”

A faint smile gave mobility to the full but firmly cut mouth of the woman who held ten thousand dollars in her hand. She said, “From what I have heard of you, Michael Shayne, I thought you’d do better than that. I am the Borden group, lock, stock and barrel.”

The redhead almost said, “Unreliable locks, watered stocks and barrels as clothing for your well-plucked backers” — but he resisted the temptation and told her gravely, “My apologies, Miss Borden, but high finance is hardly my field.”

“Mrs. Borden,” she said, adding, “Divorced.”

“And just how am I supposed to earn this ten grand?” Shayne inquired.

She sighed softly, shook her lovely head and said, “Really, Shayne! Do I have to draw you a picture? After your discussions with both the Malcolms, I’m sure you know what I’m seeking.”

“Suppose I do,” said the detective, fencing. “What makes you think I have it?”

She replied, shifting her position ever so slightly in a fascinating display of planes and curves, “I don’t necessarily think you have it, Shayne — but I believe you can get it.”

“What about the police?” he asked, ignoring her implication. “What makes you think I’m ten grand better than they are?”

Again, the faint smile, accompanied by a slight withdrawal of the proffered donation to the Shayne bank account. “It would suit my interests very well to have your friend, Mr. Gentry, and his incorruptible Miami police force find what I am seeking. But” — she leaned forward — “they have not found it yet. Therefore, it seems unlikely, under the circumstances, that they will find it. You understand, Shayne?”

Shayne understood. Among other things, he understood that, perhaps, Will Gentry’s police force was not 100 per cent incorruptible under the pressures an organisation like the Borden group was undoubtedly bringing to bear upon its members. Otherwise, she could scarcely have known whether they had discovered the record or not. He found himself increasingly curious about this woman.

He said, “Tell me, Borden — what makes you tick?”

She allowed her lids to drop modestly over her green eyes, revealing incredibly long and genuine dark lashes in the process. “Shayne,” she said, looking up at him with almost hypnotic intensity, “I’m a businesswoman. A long time ago, I discovered where my true talents lay. I have been called a wrecker of corporations. This is not so. I have never liquidated by choice. Where I have done so, it has been because I have found certain sadly mismanaged corporations as useless to the structure I am creating as dead branches to a tree.

“No, Shayne, what I like to do it take prosperous, profitable businesses and make them more prosperous and more profitable...”

She paused, and Shayne said. “To A. E. Borden, no doubt. And what about power? I don’t suppose you enjoy ordering strong men about at your whim?”

“Let us say,” she said, again dropping her eyes briefly, “that I had to take orders from an awful lot of men before I attained my present position.” Then, again earnestly, “I know you have heard Malcolm’s side of this battle. Suppose you listen to mine...”

“I’m all ears,” he told her. In A. E. Borden, he sensed that he was facing an antagonist worthy of any man’s steel. Lucy, he realised, had been right in more ways than one, when she labelled this woman dangerous.

“I intend to make Waldex the finest corporation of its type in the world. I have the backing and the money to do so, also the contacts and techniques. But, to accomplish this, I must have control of the board of directors. Since there is no chance of gaining such control through negotiation, I have appealed to the stockholders. That’s all there is to it.”

“That’s all?” Shayne inquired, toying with a paper cutter on his desk.

“That’s all,” A. E. Borden replied firmly. “Shayne, there is a rotten apple right at the top of the Waldex barrel. You have met him — so have I. Therefore, you know that, like many rotten apples, the surface still looks rosy. But a man who would steal once, to save his job, should not be chairman of any board of directors.”

“Then why didn’t Waldemar toss him out at the time he discovered the — indiscretion?” the redhead asked.

“Because,” said A. E. Borden, again leaning forward in breath-taking fashion, “he trusted Donald Malcolm absolutely. When he learned what Malcolm had done, it broke him. He died within a few years. That’s why I want that record — that’s why I’m willing to pay for it.” The cheque was thrust toward him a second time.

Shayne arose and ran strong fingers through his red hair. “One question,” he said, not looking at her. “When did you first learn about the rottenness of this apple — before, or after you began your anti-Malcolm campaign?”

“Let’s say,” she conceded, “that I learned of it during the campaign. My research department is most efficient.”

“That I believe,” the redhead told her. “But what makes you think I can put my finger on it so easily?”

“Because I know your reputation for getting whatever you go after,” said A. E. Borden. “In more than ten years, you have never failed. Believe me, you would be both wise and just to accept my fee.”

He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, Borden, but if you know my reputation so well, you know I never sell out a client.”

“In that case” — she shrugged prettily and opened her purse to return the check — “I suppose there is nothing else to be done.”

“Hardly...” the detective began, then stopped, as he found himself gating into the muzzle of a charming, but most efficient looking, gold-plated automatic. Something about the steadiness of the girl’s regard, as about the coolness of her handling of the weapon, told him she was as efficient with firearms as she appeared to be with everything else.

“Believe me,” she told him, rising gracefully, “I sincerely regret the employment of direct coercion — but I have to be sure.” She raised her voice slightly and said, “Young lady, will you please step in here a moment?”

Shayne said, “For Pete’s sake, Borden! You don’t expect to get away—”

“Quiet, please.” The threat was as naked as the gun in her hand.

Lucy appeared in the doorway — and Shayne’s caller at once applied the menace of the weapon to his brown-haired secretary. He said, his scalp suddenly crawling, even as his adrenals decanted cold fury through his veins, “Better not hurt that girl, Borden.”

The green eyes looked amused. “Ah — the Achilles heel of the mighty Shayne!” Then, “What happens to your little friend is entirely up to you. Come along now, like a nice, red-headed fury.”

V

In spite of his anger and sense of outrage, Shayne felt reluctant admiration for the cool efficiency with which A. E. Borden handled what could only be termed a double kidnapping in broad daylight. She had Lucy lock up the office, then herded her captives efficiently downstairs with a minimum of fuss. The redhead’s every nerve, every muscle, ached for explosive action, but he dared not make a move as long as Lucy was in peril.

Downsairs, it was quickly evident the green-eyed menace had not come alone on her errand. A pair of muscular young men wearing sports jackets and crew-cuts, who looked as if they might have played on the same football field with Malcolm’s guardian, Ben, quickly joined the party and led them to a large and gleaming Cadillac sedan. There, Shayne and Lucy were ensconced on the rear seat, while one of the young men sat on a little seat, after effectively checking the redhead for possible weapons. The other young man slid behind the wheel, and A. E. Borden joined him in front, looking over the back of the seat at the redhead and Lucy.

“I wish to stress again,” she told them, as the big car silently got under way, “that we mean no harm to either of you. But it is essential that we find a certain paper. Therefore, Shayne, it is equally essential we search you. And your office is hardly a convenient place. Some of your friends might drop in at an embarrassing moment.”

“What the devil makes you so sure I have it?” the redhead asked.

“Because it hasn’t been found elsewhere,” she replied quietly. “I assure you, our search has been thorough. Had the Malcolms found it, they would not have called you in to help. If Ferrell’s manservant had had it on him, the police would have found it. You were probably dickering over the price with Donald Malcolm when you saw him, a little while ago. Oh, yes, we know about that, too. You had no time to stash it in your office, since I was there. Your car was searched just now.”

“Even if I did have it in my possession,” said the detective, “why are you so sure I couldn’t have disposed of it elsewhere?”

“If you’re thinking of your friend Rourke,” was the devastating reply, “he was easy. I am not the only female member of my organisation.”

For the moment, the detective was stopped cold. He knew Tim’s weakness all too well where attractive women were concerned. No wonder the Malcolms were desperate, he thought. Fighting this woman was like fighting the G-Men and Gestapo combined.

They might have been coursing their way over the palm-lined boulevards of Miami Beach to any of the innumerable early-season cocktail routes just getting under way — pleasure seekers in a world dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, at the highest possible prices. The chauffeur drove smoothly, elegantly, to match the elegance of his car. They entered the crushed shell driveway of a chateau whose neo-Norman magnificence made the luxury of the Malcolm’s pseudo-Italian villa look, relatively, like something from Tobacco Road.

“If you’re wondering about the servants,” said A. E. Borden, removing her smart green hat and dropping it casually on a mosaic-topped table, “it’s Thursday night.” Then, to Lucy, charmingly, “We might as well wait in here until the men have finished their business.” She added, with a grimace, as though this was a cocktail party, “Men...!”

The two huskies took the redhead into a sort of playroom. It was floored with linoleum in a flagstone design and remarkably free of furniture, save for low, detachable sofa-and-chair units and hassocks. Evidently, the centre of the chamber was reserved for a non-present ping pong table. A curved bar occupied a far corner, a bar well stocked with liquor and glasses.

For once, the detective felt out-flanked and outnumbered. The devil of it was, A. E. Borden — he wondered, briefly, what the initials stood for — had managed the entire affair with a competence that was almost stupefying. Even if he and Lucy — granted they got out of it — went to the police with kidnapping charges, they could never hope to make them stick. It would be their word against that of A. E. Borden and her two young men — and they’d be lucky to escape counter-charges of trying to prove a shakedown of some sort.

But Shayne wasn’t given much time to think. If he had thought, before entering the playroom, that his hostess’s two bully-boys looked like ex-athletes, he had no doubt of it once they went to work on him. There was no violence in their actions — save for the action itself. The redhead felt his fury mounting as, calmly, disinterestedly, they set about removing his clothes. His every muscle, every nerve-end, ached for violent action — but the thought of Lucy under the threat of A. E. Borden’s gold-plated pistol held him in tight rein.

When it was over, the larger of them said, “No hard feelings, Shayne. This was just another job that had to be done.”

“Too bad you went to the trouble,” said the redhead. “As you can see, I haven’t got what your mistress wants.”

“We just had to be sure,” said the other. “No offence.”

The casual, offhand attitude of his captors added the final bit of pressure that blew the cork from his self-control. By this time, he had struggled back into his shirt and trousers. He picked up his coat from the throw-together sofa where they had carefully laid it, then opened it as if to put it on — and threw it over the head of the shorter husky, leaving him temporarily blinded. With every ounce of muscle and anger he could command, he swung a savage one-two against the unprotected chin of the larger of his tormentors.

The big fellow staggered back two paces, a look of surprise on his thick features. The redhead ducked low, weaving under a barrage of counter-blows, and planted another combination, well below the belt. This time, his assailant doubled up, and Shayne swung quickly, just as his other foe, having tossed the jacket clear of his head, came in with both fists swinging.

Mike took a left to the side of the head that made him see lightning, managing to avoid a right hook that slipped past the back of his skull. Then he brought one of his own heels down hard on his attacker’s instep, had the satisfaction of hearing him cry out in pain and, momentarily, drop his guard. In a lightning judo blow, Shayne drove the edge of his right hand against the left side of this opponent’s neck, momentarily paralysing him. He planted a swinging straight left on the inner point of the other side of the man’s jaw, just below the ear, and watched him drop like a dead deer.

“That’s enough, Shayne — I think the boys have had their quota of exercise for the day,” said a low, amused contralto from the doorway. He looked around, to see A. E. Borden standing there, cigarette in hand, regarding him with a mixture of mockery and admiration in her pale green eyes. “Sometimes,” she added, “I believe I got into the wrong business — I should have been a prize-fight manager. I love to watch men knocking each other’s brains out.”

Shayne advanced on her grimly, keeping a wary eye out for his two defeated opponents. He said, “Now, Borden, if you have done anything to—”

“Your little lady is waiting in the living room,” said A. E. Borden, stepping back to let him pass. “I think you’ll find her comfortable.”

Seconds later, Lucy was in his arms, crying, “Mike, honey — are you all right?”

“You should see the two other guys,” said A. E. Borden drily. “That’s quite a man you’ve got there, my friend. Better take good care of him if you want to keep him.” Then, dropping mockery, to Shayne, “I’m sorry we couldn’t get together, Shayne, because I think we could do business. You’ll understand, I hope, that I had to be sure.” She frowned, her thoughts drifting elsewhere, then added, “By the way, I had your car brought over. You’ll find it waiting outside.”

Shayne didn’t bother saying farewell. He went out with Lucy fast.

VI

The darkness of a late November evening had already mantled the magic city, and the long row of luxury hotels was ablaze with its nocturnal jewellery of neon and electricity, as the detective drove Lucy back to her apartment. He could feel her trembling as she nestled close against him in the front of the sedan. He placed a reassuring hand on her thigh and said, “I’m sorry, angel, but it’s okay now.”

“That woman scares me to death,” Lucy told him.

“Me, too,” he admitted. “She’s the most cold-blooded, efficient human being I’ve ever met in my life — I’m not sure ‘human’ is the word for her.”

“That isn’t what scares me most about her,” Lucy told him in a very small voice. “It’s what she said about you. What if she should decide she wanted you?”

“That,” he told her grimly, “would be the second time I disappointed her. I’d as soon tangle with a queen cobra — if there is such an animal.”

“But she’s beautiful!” Lucy sounded close to tears.

“So is a cobra,” the redhead replied. “What did you two talk about while I was playing games in the rumpus room?”

“Mostly about you,” said Lucy. “She’s interested, Mike. That’s what scared me so when she made that last crack.”

“Well,” said Shayne, “perhaps she is human, if only because she can be wrong. She wasted a lot of effort to find out I don’t have that damned piece of paper.”

He dropped her off at her apartment and said, “Better stay put until you hear from me, Angel. This seems to be developing into quite an operation.”

“Mike,” she said, holding him close, “you’ll be careful, won’t you? After all, these people mean nothing to you.”

“Maybe not,” said the redhead, thinking of Lois Malcolm and the spot she was in. “Maybe not, but I’ve taken on a job.” He kissed her good night and waited, there in the car, until he saw her safely inside the building. Then he got the car going again.

The next step, he decided, was his office. He needed it as a head-quarters while he did some telephoning and decided upon the tactics best calculated to recover the missing document and bring the killer of Duke Ferrell into the open. Tim Rourke, he hoped, might have picked up something — and he wanted to see what he could dig out of Len Sturgis and Homicide. Then...

He took the stairs to his office two at a time, seeking physical release for the rage he still felt at the ease with which the green-eyed woman had handled him. Sooner or later, he told himself grimly, he was going to settle the score with A. E. Borden — and not merely by engaging in physical combat with her brood of huskies. The muscle-men involved in high finance might not be underworld types, but they packed plenty of punch.

To his surprise, he found a caller awaiting him in the corridor, outside his office door. It was Seton, the Duke’s manservant. The little man with the immense nose and the double-bags under his eyes looked considerably the worse for wear than he had in the morning. There were signs, evident to the detective’s practiced eye, that he had been given a rough time by the police.

Shayne walked up to him and said, “So they let you go — that’s good. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Seton. Come on ins—”

He broke off. The odd little man was looking at him with an expression of sheer horror on his oddly-shaped, somewhat battered face. He said, “Mr. Shayne — your...” His eyes rolled upward under their lids, he uttered an odd little moaning sound and pitched forward into the detective’s arms.

The detective caught him, wondering briefly what to do with him. His first impulse was to take him into the office and bring him around. But Seton was light as a girl in his arms, and the detective had been planning a thorough look at the late Duke Ferrell’s apartment. Even though the police and A. E. Borden’s aides had already searched it, there was a chance...

He was beginning to wonder if the Borden group was as efficient as it seemed on the surface. After all, they had made one big mistake — in kidnapping Lucy and himself, under the impression that he had the vanished document on his person. They might have made other slipups as well — and the police had not known what to search for that morning.

He carried the little man downstairs and put him carefully in the front seat of his car. He went around it then, and drove him back across the Bay, to the beach cottage where Harlan Ferrell had lived out his last, misspent season. If the police still had a watch on the house, Seton’s condition gave the detective a perfect legitimate reason for returning to the scene of the crime. But there were no legal guardians in evidence when Shayne braked his sedan to a halt

The little man appeared to be in a state of shock — evidently, Shayne thought, Sturgis and his boys had given him quite a going over. From the fact they had let him go, however, it was apparent that Seton had not cracked under the pressure. Evidently, there had been a delayed reaction that sight of the redhead had brought on Shayne wondered why Seton had wanted to talk to him.

The cottage door was locked, and the detective felt around in Seton’s pockets until he found a bunch of keys. The little man stirred and uttered a few meaningless sounds, but did not recover consciousness. Shayne tried the keys until he found the proper one and got the door open. Then he went back to his sedan and carried the little manservant inside.

Not knowing the location of the light switches, but recalling a clear path from the front door to the oyster-white, leather sofa, beside which Duke Ferrell had fallen, the redhead carried his caller in and laid him out upon it, planning to hunt for illumination later.

It was just as he bent over that the blow, from some heavy object, hit the back of his head, well behind the ear, causing him almost to pitch forward on top of Seton. There was no sound of warning, and the detective was caught utterly off guard, absorbed as he was in the man he had been carrying.

But the frustration over his earlier mishandling was still strong, and he swung with a snarl, catching a view, in silhouette, of his attacker, whose arm was just moving upward to deliver a second blow. Shayne moved in quickly. His left arm came upward to fend off further attack, brushed a hat from his unknown assailant’s head, and he felt the man’s downward blow averted by the defensive action.

Before his ambusher could make another aggressive move, the detective was swarming all over him, pumping both fists into his belly. He felt flesh cave beneath the power of his attack. He heard the man grunt, gasp and gurgle, then go into retreat. Shayne lifted his attack, smashing at the man’s face, then crowding and tripping him rolling to the soft carpet with him.

Suddenly, he was caught in a circle of light as a powerful flash-beam discovered him in its glare. The soft, familiar voice of Lois Malcolm said, “All right, get up and put up your hands.” There was a gasp, then, “Mike Shayne!”

The redhead looked at the man he had been trying to batter to a pulp. It was Donald Malcolm, and he was shaking his head and saying, “Lemme up, you big ox, lemme up!”

VII

Shayne straightened and ran his fingers through his red hair, as Lois helped her husband to his feet. He found a wall-switch, flooded the cottage living room with light, then looked at the Malcolms with disgust.

It was Lois who spoke first. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she said. “I didn’t think...”

“You,” said the detective “didn’t think, period! Neither, it seems, did this high-powered genius of a husband of yours. What in hell did you believe you were trying to accomplish by coming here?”

“We had to do something,” said Malcolm, mopping blood from his face with a handkerchief. “We couldn’t just sit home and—”

“Isn’t that what your wife hired me to do?” Shayne asked dourly. “Take care of the action so you could sit home and keep your skirts clean?” The Malcolms were essentially nice people and, in the redheads lexicon, nice people should behave like nice people. He added, “What are you going to do when the company starts coming — because company’s coming, and don’t think it isn’t. You can’t go blundering around in a murder case, like a pair of blind giraffes and not expect to draw attention to yourselves.”

“Do you want us to get out of here, Shayne?” Malcolm asked shakily. His face had gone white under the impact of the redhead’s verbal whiplash.

“Suit yourself,” said the disgusted detective. He looked at the sofa, where Seton was sitting up, beginning to take an interest in the proceedings. Catching Shayne’s regard, the little man rose, unsteadily, and removed himself from the centre of the stage.

Again, it was Lois Malcolm who recovered her self-possession ahead of her husband. She said with a touch of dignity that wrung the redhead’s heart, “Come on, darling, I think we’d better keep out of Mike’s way from now on.”

Seton stepped forward, obsequiously, re-assuming his role of perfect manservant. With an, “Excuse me, Sir,” he crossed in front of the detective, stooped and picked up the hat that Shayne had knocked from Donald Malcolm’s head, picking it up, dusting it off and handing it to the Waldex board chairman.

“Your hat, Mr. Malcolm,” he said.

Malcolm took it automatically, offered Lois his arm and turned toward the doorway. It was then that the detective said, “You might as well stay here, both of you and sit in on the fun.”

“What fun, may I ask?” queried Seton, his eyebrows drawn together to meet in a near-perfect Gothic arch above the bridge of his large beak.

“Take it easy, Seton,” said Shayne, good-humouredly. “You’ve had a hard day, and the night isn’t over yet. There may be more hats to handle.”

Donald Malcolm, still hesitating, finally said, “Shayne, I know you and Lois didn’t discuss your fee this morning. But, if this business works out, you can rest assured of a five-figure cheque.” Even with an incipient black-eye beginning to show, Malcolm’s anxiety was pitiable.

“Thanks,” Shayne dismissed the remark almost curtly. To Seton, he said, “Are you feeling well enough to talk a little? I’ve got a hunch you may be able to help us clear this mess up.” His left thumb and forefinger tugged at the lobe of his ear.

“I was hoping to speak with you, Sir,” said Seton. “I thought perhaps we might...” He let it hang, looked meaningfully at the Malcolms.

“It’s all right,” said the detective. “I was just wondering if you were able to give any help to the police this afternoon.”

Sadly, the little man shook his head. “No sir,” he said. “I fear I proved a great disappointment to Mr. Sturgis. He and his assistants seemed to believe I had knowledge I fear I do not possess. I was very fond of Mr. Ferrell, and I only wish I could name the person who shot him.”

“Of course you do,” said Shayne sympathetically.

Lois Malcolm’s remarkable composure finally cracked. She said, “Mike, please! Don’t torment us. Can’t you see what this is doing to Donald? We can face whatever is going to happen, but we’ve got to know. This suspense...”

“I didn’t know myself,” said Shayne, looking at her intently, “until just a moment ago. Now...”

The soft chime of the doorbell interrupted him. He nodded to Seton, who padded across the thick carpet to open it. Moments later, A. E. Borden strode into the room alone, clad in a shimmering, skin-fitting, green gown that made her resemble a glittering butterfly. The twin wings of her black-ivory brows rose a trifle as she surveyed the company present.

“I hope,” she began quietly, “that this is not a private session.” Then, to Shayne, all business, “Mike, when I learned you and the Malcolms were headed this way, I thought little Alice Edwina had better hop over herself. Have you closed a deal with them yet?” The pronoun was emphasised scathingly.

“Alice Edwina,” mused the redhead. “I was wondering what the A. E. stood for.” Then, shaking his head, “Not yet, Borden. Not quite...”

“Then here’s my offer,” said A. E. Borden, quietly. “I have another cashier’s check here in my bag, made out to you, Shayne. The amount is fifty thousand dollars.” She waited quietly, watching him.

Malcolm, moved forward, pushing back his wife’s restraining hand. “I’ll meet that,” he said hoarsely, realised their importance.

The air was tense, weighted only with the disgust on the detective’s face. He looked from one to the other of them, finally settled on Seton, said, “All right, you — which offer do you prefer? As a man with an interest in his late master’s property?”

Seton met the redhead’s gaze, then his eyes fell away. He said, “I’ll leave that up to you, Sir, if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t be a fool, Shayne,” A. E. Borden said sharply. “I can offer you a lot more than cash. Once I have control of the corporation, I can make you a millionaire.” Then, to the Malcolms. “Try to meet that with your old-hat company methods!”

“Mike,” Lois Malcolm said, ah most pitifully, “Mike, don’t listen to her. She’ll promise you the moon and give you nothing. She’ll make a fool of you.”

“Something,” Shayne said acidly, “both you and your husband, as well as Alice Edwina, have been doing an excellent job of to-day.” Then, as all serenity fled her face, “Don’t worry, Lois. I’m not going to take it.”

Shayne turned toward the doorway and said, “For Pete’s sake, come in, Len. You’ve taken your own sweet time getting here. I was beginning to think you’d left the place unguarded.”

“The motor patrol had an eye on it,” the hulking detective growled as he moved into the room. “They only reported the lights on ten minutes ago.” He surveyed the assemblage and said, “What is this — a new hotel opening?”

Shayne said, “Len, for your own good, the less you know about it, the better.” He named the Malcolms and A. E. Borden, had the satisfaction of seeing the huge Homicide sleuth change colour as he realised their importance.

But Sturgis was dogged. He said, “They may be the royal family of England, but I’ve still got a shooting to solve. If they had anything to do with it...”

“They didn’t,” said the detective quietly. For the first time since he had been drawn into the case that morning, Shayne felt in command of the situation. “Take my word for it, they had nothing directly to do with it.”

“Then,” said a bewildered Sturgis, “what in hell are they all doing here — now? Having a camp meeting?”

“Their presence here, like mine, is largely accidental,” said Shayne.

“I’ve had about enough of this, Mike,” Sturgis big, homely face was beginning to darken with anger. “I’m looking for a killer. And, if I find out there’s one here...”

“There’s your killer,” said the redhead, nodding toward Seton. “Why don’t you take him away and dig up some proof?”

“Mr. Shayne...!” The manservant’s face turned ashen with panic. “Mr. Shayne, they’ve already questioned me. So help me, I’d rather have died myself than lay a hand on Mr. Ferrell.”

“You didn’t lay a hand on him,” said Shayne. “You didn’t dare — he’d have beaten you to a pulp. Maybe he did a few times. So you shot him instead.”

“But I didn’t have a weapon!” the manservant bleated. “How could I shoot him without a gun?” His eyes were moving back and forth, between Shayne and Len Sturgis, like the eyes of a man watching a tennis rally.

“You probably heaved it into the Bay,” said Shayne. “When you ran out after shooting him, before coming back to ‘discover’ the body. But I don’t think they’ll need a gun.” He swung on Sturgis, “When you had this little rat downtown to-day, I’ll lay odds you didn’t give him a paraffin test.”

“Hell! No!” said Sturgis. “But we can’t test everybody.”

“Not everybody — just him,” said Shayne, nodding at Seton. “You’ll find he had plenty of reason for hating the Duke. Hell, he must have had, living years with a crumb like that. He’s guilty, all right. Look at him!”

Seton cracked. With an odd little animal cry, he flung himself at the redhead, fingers clawed as if he wanted to scratch out his eyes. Shayne caught him easily, held him as he struggled in futility to damage his accuser.

The little man shouted, “All right, so I shot him. But they’re all guilty — every one of them! Why don’t you arrest them all, too? Why don’t you—”

Shayne shut him up with a ringing slap across the mouth, then pushed him into the arms of Len Sturgis. “Better get him out of here,” he said, “before he tries to get you to arrest yourself.”

VIII

When police and killer were gone, A. E. Borden stamped out her cigarette and said, “It might be wise if we pooled to get him a lawyer smart enough to make the little swine keep his trap shut.” Then, when no one else spoke, “Well, shall we start the bidding again?”

“Oh, no!” cried Lois Malcolm “Not after...”

“Why not?” drawled A. E. Borden. “In this instance, it seems to me there is no time like the present. How about it, Mike? You’ve done a good day’s work already. You ought to be paid for it.” She paused, added, “I’ll pay you an extra ten thousand just to learn what you did with that ever-loving document.”

“If you’ve really got it,” said Donald Malcolm, a mite doubtfully.

“I’ve got it, all right,” said Shayne, smiling faintly. “Don’t worry about that. But I have a question or two I’d like to ask.” He eyed the Malcolms, added: “Malcolm, when I crashed your office as Duke Ferrell, you made a remark that pulled me. You said that your wife was supposed to ‘take care’ of me this morning. Since you obviously didn’t know Ferrell was dead, I didn’t query you then...”

He paused to tug at his left ear, then said, “Lois, did you come here this morning to collect that damned paper and pay for it?” And, at her nod, “How much?”

She said, “Ten thousand dollars. Duke said he was letting it go cheap, because he had been fond of Henry Waldemar, and knew Waldemar had liked me.”

“I see,” said the detective. He swung on A. E. Borden and asked, “How much were you willing to pay for it?”

“Fifty grand,” the green-eyed woman said quietly. “Seventy-five if I had to. Our negotiations hadn’t progressed that far. Why? I just made you a better offer.”

“I think,” said Shayne, “that sixty-five grand difference is the reason Seton killed him. Lois, you were just a little too attractive. You charmed Ferrell into selling too cheaply for his health.”

Lois Malcolm’s hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes grew round with horror. But A. E. Borden said, “Who cares why the little beast killed him. Shayne, what about that paper? Are you ready to listen to reason — or money?”

Shayne took a walk around the oyster-white sofa, finally came to a halt in a spot where he could look at all three of them. “You,” he told them, “are all damned attractive people. Lois Craig, if I hadn’t half-fallen in love with you, years ago, I never would have taken the case on at all — and frankly, I wish to heaven I hadn’t. Malcolm, you’re a nice guy, a talented character, a man people like and trust instinctively. As for you, A. E.” — he paused and shook his head — “You made my girl jealous.”

“Thank you!” said A. E., her green eyes bright with speculation.

“Don’t bother,” said Shayne. He paused, went on with, “There’s just one thing wrong with all of you — for one reason or another, you all crave power the way a drunkard craves whisky. And wanting power has made all of you ugly. It has made Lois a conniving, truthless cheat, ostensibly on behalf of her husband’s career. It has made her husband a thief at least once, perhaps more — I wouldn’t know. And you, A. E. — your craving has turned you into a caricature of everything a man wants in a woman.”

“Just a minute, Shayne,” Malcolm rose from the sofa he was sharing with his wife. “Just because you hold the whip-hand, you can’t talk that way to—”

Shayne stared him down, then said wearily, “Do I have to knock some sense into you again, Malcolm — or can’t you face a truth? Anyway, the sermon’s over. Go ahead and have your proxy fight. I can’t stop you. But, if I took a dime from any of you over this mess, I’d be right down to your level — and I have no intention of sinking that far while I’m conscious. Yes, I have that damned paper — but I don’t intend to have it long.”

“Mike! You’re not going to—” Lois began.

“I’m going to destroy it,” the redhead told them.

There was a long, heavy silence. Then A. E. picked up her glittering green purse and stole, and rose grasefully from the chair she had been occupying. “In that case,” she said, “I’ll be going. I know when I’m licked.” She glanced at the Malcolms, added, “But I’ll have at least two seats, on your precious board of directors, come New Year’s Eve, and there’s always a next time.”

Passing Shayne en route to the door, she said, “Mike, you’re exciting when you’re angry. See you later.”

It was long after midnight when Shayne climbed out of his sedan in front of the dark business building where he had his office — but a slim, elegant figure detached itself from the shadows by the entrance and moved into the glow of the corner street lamp. It was A. E. Borden, still clad in the glittering, skin-fitting dress and stole.

“It’s all right, Mike,” she said, opening her evening bag. “See? No artillery.”

Hands on hips, he surveyed her magnificent body with a faint, sardonic smile. “Okay, so I won’t have to frisk you in that outfit. But what in hell are you here for?”

“Mike,” she said quietly, “when I’m outfoxed, I can’t sleep until I know how it was done. I told you I’d pay ten grand to find out what you did with that paper.” Reading his expression correctly, she added hastily, “I’m alone — this time.”

“How did you know I was coming here?” he asked sharply.

She smiled up at him enigmatically, said, “Because we searched your apartment, and it wasn’t there. So you had to come here, if you mean to destroy it. I’ve been waiting.” She nodded toward a Cadillac across the street.

“So I see,” he said. “Now run along home.”

“No, Mike,” she pleaded. “Please — I’ve got to know.”

If she had come close to him, if she had touched him, he would have sent her away. But she did none of these obvious, feminine things. She merely stood there and asked him. To his amazement, he heard himself growl, “Okay, then, come along — but no tricks.”

Not until the office door was safely locked behind him, did he permit himself to relax. Even then, he walked warily, with this glamorous peril so close at hand. He ushered her into the inner office, let her take his usual chair, behind his desk. He lit cigarettes for both of them, perched on the comer and looked down at her, thinking she looked absurdly elegant and feminine in such a spot, for all of her ruthless, executive genius.

She said, “Mike, I’m still waiting.”

“Okay, then,” he repeated, running a hand through his red hair. “You know, you were right about my having the paper on my person — up to a point. The damnedest part of the whole business is that I didn’t know where it was until about three minutes before you crashed the party at the Duke’s cottage.”

She looked at him, frowning slightly, her lips parted. “You didn’t know...? No wonder you were so convincing about not having it. You must have thought I was crazy.”

“I never thought that!” he told her drily. “The tip off came this evening, when I told the Malcolms to go home, and Seton, very much the butler, picked up Malcolm’s hat and handed it to him. You see, he handed me my hat this morning, when I first went to Ferrell’s cottage. He must have been scared the cops would find it on him and nail him as the Duke’s killer, so he took advantage of the opportunity to unload it on me. He planned to contact me later and make some sort of a deal.”

Shayne paused, but green eyes begged him silently to continue. He said, “When I got back from my visit to Malcolm, I hung my hat on the hanger in the outer office, came in here and found you. There was no opportunity to reclaim my hat when you ushered Lucy and me out to — tea.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said but there was no apology in her manner.

Shayne said, “You aren’t the type to feel sorry for anything you do. You’re... but to hell with it! Anyway, when I got back here, Seton was waiting for me in the corridor. He’d been given a going over by the police, and, when he saw me come up without a hat, it was too much for him. He keeled over.”

Shayne paused, then added, “You know the rest. I made a crack to Seton, once I caught on, about his having other hats to take care of to-night, and he jumped — not much, just enough to show me I was right.”

“One thing I like about you, Mike,” said A. E., stirring lazily in the big chair, “is your assurance. You’re going to look pretty silly if that paper isn’t in the hat. Suppose my boys and I worked it out the same way. Suppose...”

“There’s one way to settle it,” said Shayne.

He strode into the outer office, took his hat from the rack, returned to the other room and opened up the band. It was there — in the form of a handwritten letter to Henry Waldemar from Donald Malcolm, written on thin paper and folded lengthwise, to slip under the hatband without notice.

Shayne read it, then looked down at A. E., who regarded him impassively, with the faintest of smiles. Then, deliberately, he turned his back on her, went to the window, lit a match, fired the letter and held it outside until it was consumed to fluttering ash in the night. When he turned around, he say that A. E. had risen and was standing over his steel waste container, performing a function similar to that he had just completed.

“What are you burning?” he asked suspiciously.

“Just a piece of paper,” she said, quite seriously. “A cheque for fifty thousand dollars.”

Shayne looked at A. E., then at the remains of the cheque, then at the window. “Move over,” he told her, “so I can get at the desk drawers. I think this calls for a drink.”

To Anita — With Murder

by Vic Rodell

Kingston was dead. It was up to Private Eye Cory Andrews, his best friend, to find his killer and clear his name, for the wife he left behind him.

I

The coffee tasted bitter, and the grey rain drilling down outside the drugstore window looked just the way I felt. The big black headlines on the morning papers, spread out on the table before me, didn’t help my mood, either.

I looked up at the pretty, dark-haired girl who sat across from me in the booth. I said, “It smells — the whole thing smells — phoney. But why, Muriel? Why?”

Her slim fingers tightened on the coffee mug, as though she wanted desperately to hang on to something real and solid. Something that would drag her back from the nightmare she had just been through.

“I wish to goodness I knew, Cory. Anything, no matter how bad it was, would be better than... than this.” She spread her hands.

The accounts in the papers were very brief, since the story broke just before press-time. Ralph Kingston was dead. Not a noble death — not even an honourable death, like being struck down by a car, or killed in the line of duty. He had been shot down, ignominiously, in a gambler’s apartment during an attempted hold-up.

Muriel Kingston, the dead man’s widow, had walked into my office barely an hour before. I had known her three years, which was seven years short of the time I had known Ralph. She had given me the facts, the words tumbling out in a voice that was choked with hysteria.

“Ralph left home about eight o’clock last night, Cory. He acted perfectly normal. I knew he was working on a case, so I didn’t think anything about it — even when he didn’t tell me where he was going. That was the last I saw of him. The police called me about four this morning, and told me he was dead!”

“Do you know whether Ralph knew Anthony Lorio?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, Cory. I never heard him mention him. I don’t know much about Lorio, except that he owns the Peacock Club. But it isn’t true...” She leaned forward and her hands clutched the arms of her chair. “Cory, you knew Ralph a long time. That’s why I’ve come here. You know he wasn’t a common thief!”

“Did the police give you many details, Muriel?”

“It happened at Lorio’s place. They said he was in an apartment over the club. Lorio says he left the club about two forty-five and went up to the apartment. He says he always takes the cash receipts from the club and puts them in a safe in the apartment.” Her tongue flicked over her lips. “Anyway, he says, when he got upstairs, two men were waiting inside the front hall.

“It was dark — they had unscrewed the light bulbs in the room, so, when he flicked the switch, nothing happened. One of the men jumped him and hit him with a blackjack, so Lorio pulled a gun and shot three times. One of the men got away down the back stairway, but, when he got the lights on, Lorio discovered he had hit one of them. The man was already dead — and it was Ralph!”

The note of hysteria had crept back into her voice, and suddenly she sprang from her chair.

“Cory, that just can’t be true! It’s some sort of a frame, or Ralph was dragged into something he didn’t know about. You knew him well — would you believe it?”

That’s when I’d brought her downstairs for coffee.

I couldn’t believe it about Ralph, either. Sure, I knew him well. I knew he was a full-grown 33-year-old man — and that he was a tough cop. He knew the facts of life, he knew how to take care of himself. I had always judged him to be honest and incorruptible, and I didn’t think I had judged him wrong on that point.

On the other hand, I hadn’t seen much of him in the past year, since I was booted off the police force. I had stepped on the Chief’s fingers in a case I was working on, when I knew an innocent man was being made the goat in an underworld gang killing, but couldn’t prove it.

I hadn’t blamed the Chief. After all, second-grade detectives don’t go around shooting off their mouths against the Chief. Besides, he had had his axes to grind. So I had been forced to continue waging my one-man war against crime from other quarters, and opened my own private agency.

My thoughts went back to Ralph Kingston. Perhaps the very fact that he was an incorruptible cop had led to his downfall. Lorio might have had very good reason for wanting to get rid of him. I agreed with Muriel that it was most unlikely Ralph had turned to grand larceny on the side. It just didn’t fit what I knew about the guy.

“How far have the police gone in their investigation?” I asked. “Do they have any actual proof, other than Lorio’s statement, that Ralph was trying to rob him?”

“As far as I know, just Lorio’s story.” She leaned across the table, her eyes biasing. “He could have been there on some official business. Lorio could have shot him, then made up this story about the robbery.”

“Yeah — maybe. But why, Muriel? He’d have to have a reason, and a damned good one. Besides, Anthony Lorio’s a big man in this town, and he’s always kept himself clean with the police. Sure, he runs a big private gambling club, and he may have his fingers in other underworld rackets. But he’s no small-time cop killer.” I shook my head.

“If he wanted to get rid of Ralph for some reason, it seems logical he’d have got someone else to do it. He’d have had it done somewhere outside his own place. But Lorio shot him himself, by his own admission. It doesn’t add up.”

I lit a cigarette, and finished up the coffee — it was lukewarm now — and added, “By the way, have the police been to your place yet?”

“No. They asked me to come down and — identify Ralph, right after they told me what had happened. They said they’d be out this morning. They wanted to look over his things.” Her face clouded, and her eyes were defiant. “They seemed to think they’d find some of his loot at home.”

She started to say something else, then paused. Even white teeth gave her lower lip a work-out. A little frown settled itself between her dark eyes. Then she seemed to make up her mind about something, and reached for her handbag. She opened the catch, fumbled inside and came up with a little piece of yellow paper. I didn’t have to look twice to know what it was.

“Cory, I want you to take this pawn ticket, and find out what it’s for.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I found it among Ralph’s things. Please take it, and see what it’s for, before the police come.”

I took the yellow slip from her fingers, looked at it, turned it over. It was from Lowenstein’s Loan Shop on South Rampart. I creased it in the middle and stuck it in my billfold.

“Has Ralph been hard up lately?”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing missing from the apartment that he could have pawned. Besides, we have money in the bank. I know it wasn’t because he needed extra cash.”

She was afraid to put her doubts and suspicions into words, I was sure. So I helped her out.

“You realize what this could mean, Muriel?”

She nodded. “If it’s proved to me, beyond all doubt, then I’ll have to accept it. But unless it is, I won’t believe Ralph was there for the purpose of robbing that man.”

I got up, walked around to her side of the table and lifted the white topcoat from the back of the seat where it had slipped from her shoulders.

“Come on,” I said, “you’re going home. I’ll take over from here.”

She smiled and stood up. I put the coat across her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “You do just what the police tell you, and I’ll call you at home when I pick up anything. You don’t have to tell them about me...” I paused.

“There’s one thing you must know, Muriel. About that pawn ticket — if it turns out to be anything the police should know, I’ve got to turn it over to them. It’s a little matter of ethics that friendship can’t touch. Understand?”

She nodded. “I understand, Cory. I’ll leave it up to you.”

II

I followed Muriel to the street. The grey haze which had cloaked the city that morning had turned into a raw, wet drizzle. I walked a couple of blocks, then went into a drugstore for another cup of coffee.

The early editions of the afternoon papers were out, and their coverage on the shooting was more complete. I took the papers to a back booth, and studied them carefully with the coffee.

It was an open and shut case, according to the stories turned in by the reporters. Anthony Lorio’s story stood up. He had made a signed statement to the police about the attempted hold-up. One paper had a picture of him emerging from Police Headquarters, and he didn’t look very happy. His smooth, black head was swathed in a bandage, and the right side of his face looked swollen and discoloured.

One of the papers had a little bulletin box at the top of the story, printed in bold type. The police had found Kingston’s car parked on the side of the road a half mile from Lorio’s place. In the glove compartment, they had found a roll of black masking-tape, an improvised mask and several pieces of obviously expensive jewellery. They were checking theft reports, the story stated, to see if the jewellery was stolen.

I swore. It looked bad for Ralph, all right — but I still felt as Muriel did. I couldn’t believe it.

I walked the few blocks from the drugstore to Police Headquarters. The rain bit through my topcoat, but I needed the exercise to clear my brain. The pawn ticket was burning a hole in my wallet, where I had stuck it, but I wanted some first-hand information from headquarters before I visited the loan shop. Besides, the longer it reposed in my pocket, the longer it would be before I’d have to face Muriel with what I was afraid I’d find out.

I had known Lieutenant Tracy Evans a long time, since before my days as a homicide detective. He was a good cop, but he had been a cop so long, he had lost a piece of his heart somewhere along the line. To Tracy, all men who passed through his files were bad, until they proved themselves good. I had never agreed with his line of reasoning, but I always admired and respected his ability as a police officer.

Tracy looked dead-tired. His big frame sagged in the chair behind his desk, and his cold, blue eyes were ringed with black circles. He scowled when he saw me.

“Don’t bother me to-day, Andrews. I’m up to my neck in trouble,” he said.

“You don’t mean this Kingston affair is getting you down!”

“Don’t be flippant. I’m not in the mood for wisecracks.” He stabbed viciously with his smoked-up butt at the ashtray. “What a hell of a mess!”

“You really think Kingston was guilty of robbery, Tracy?”

“You’re damn right I think he was guilty! I’ve got all the physical evidence I need. The facts don’t lie, Andrews — much as I hate to admit it. I’m kicking myself all over the place for not finding out about it sooner, before something like this happened.”

He shoved the chair away from the desk, stood up, and started a restless pacing back and forth across the office. “The papers are having a field day. A nice, juicy scandal, and they can kick us right where it hurts most. Then we even find evidence in his car!”

“What about that jewellery? Have you checked it yet?”

“Yeah — we checked. It’s stolen goods, all right. It was stolen about two weeks ago, from a private residence out by the lake.”

“Have you considered the possibility of a frame?”

“Don’t be melodramatic, Cory. This is no frame — it’s cold, hard fact. I don’t like it — you don’t like it — a lot of other people think it stinks like hell. But the facts speak for themselves.”

“Couldn’t someone else have stolen that jewellery and planted it in Kingston’s car last night?”

Evans scowled again, and I knew I had belted a homer. But he said, “We’d never in the world prove it. The house was burglarised while the owners were out of town. No one knows exactly when the stuff was stolen, and no one saw the thief. There were no fingerprints, no clues of any kind.” He paused and looked out at the rain-washed sky.

“Besides, that blow on Lorio’s head wasn’t faked. In fact, it damn near killed him.” He shook his head. “I know Kingston was a friend of yours, Cory, but you might as well face it. He was a no-good, yellow-bellied thief.”

I picked up my hat and left Tracy Evans’ office. He already had Ralph Kingston pinned to the cross — where he thought he belonged. Nothing I could say was going to change his mind.

III

The streets were crowded with late morning shoppers in spite of the rain. In Louisiana, in January, nobody stays home on account of the rain. If they did, they’d never go anyplace. I picked my way through the crowds to Rampart Street, and headed for Lowenstein’s Loan Shop.

I knew Abe pretty well — in fact, I had done a little business with him myself, right after I opened my own office. He was a nice little guy, and a sucker for a hard-luck story. I wondered, sometimes, how he managed to stay in business.

He greeted me warmly. “Mr. Cory Andrews — it’s good to see you!” Then his face sobered, and he peered at me anxiously. “How’s business? You doin’ all right?”

“Sure, Abe. Everything’s fine. This isn’t a business call — at least, not as far as your business is concerned. It is, though, from the standpoint of a client of mine.”

“You got something to pawn?”

“No, Abe.” I pulled out my wallet, and took out the yellow slip. “I want you to do me a favour. Can you tell me what merchandise this ticket’s for?”

He took the slip, went to a wall safe in the back of the shop and extracted a worn black ledger. His stubby forefinger slid down the page over a column of numerals. Finally it stopped. Abe paused perceptibly before he closed the book, his finger still marking the place. He held the book against his chest, and slowly turned to face me.

“Mr. Andrews, do you know who that ticket belonged to?”

“Sure, Abe, I know. I guess you’ve read the papers.”

Abe nodded. “This is bad — very bad. I’ll have to tell the police about it. That man was a thief!”

I grabbed Abe’s arm. “I don’t think so, Abe. Kingston was a friend of mine. I think he was framed.” I paused. “What did he pawn here?”

“It was a diamond bracelet. A very fine expensive bracelet. I loaned him eight hundred dollars on it”

I could feel the sickness welling up inside of me. Maybe Tracy was right, after all. Maybe I was soft-hearted, and a rotten judge of character — just because I’d liked the guy, considered him my friend. Then I remembered Muriel’s anguished face, her tormented words.

“Do you remember the transaction, Abe?”

“Sure — I remember it well. I don’t get merchandise like this often. I don’t make loans of eight hundred every day.” Abe pursed his lips and frowned. “He said it was his wife’s — that he had a chance to make some money on a business deal, but he had to have some ready cash. The bracelet is worth much more than that, but I told him it was as high as I could go.”

“Will you let me see it?”

He shrugged. “Sure — there’s no harm in that. The man is dead. I’ll have to tell the police, and they’ll come and take the bracelet. I lose the eight hundred bucks.” He shook his nearly-bald head, and walked back to the safe. “That’s a big loss for me, but it’s a chance we gotta take in this business.”

He opened the outer door of the safe again, and fiddled with the dial on a smaller inner compartment. A moment later, he returned to the counter at the front of the shop, with a manilla envelope in his hand.

The bracelet slithered on to the counter top, as he poured it from the envelope. I picked it up.

“What’s it really worth, Abe?”

He clasped his hands together on top of the counter. “Oh — maybe eight thousand — maybe a little more on the market to-day. Those baguettes in the centre are a good two carats apiece.”

“Would a guy be crazy to take eight hundred for a bracelet worth ten times that much, after he’d gone to the trouble of stealing it?”

“He would, yes. But unless he had a good fence to sell it for him, maybe he couldn’t get anything at all. You know that, Mr. Andrews. Stolen jewellery isn’t so easy to dispose of.”

“Sure, Abe — I know.” I could tell the defeat was there, in my voice.

I turned the bracelet over and ran it through my fingers. The cool hardness of the stones gave me an odd feeling of excitement. Then something on the back caught my eye.

I quickly went to the front of the store, where the light was better, and held the bracelet up where I could see it clearly. I hadn’t been mistaken. There was an inscription on the back.

It had been done in tiny script. Unless my eyesight was good, I’d probably have missed it entirely. Mine, fortunately, was good. It said, To Anita — with love.

Then I felt the mounting excitement turn to sickness again. It didn’t mean a damned thing. If anything, it made things look even worse for Kingston.

“When did he pawn this, Abe?”

He consulted the black ledger again. “On December seventeenth — just about a month ago.”

I laid the bracelet on the counter, picked up the pawn ticket and said, “Abe, I’m going to ask you to do me another favour. Just forget I was in here. Unless I go to the police with this ticket, there’s no way for them to know about the bracelet. And there’s no reason you should remember the name of a man who pawned something here a month ago.”

Abe frowned. “I’m an honest man, Mr. Andrews. I’ve always played square with the police. I don’t monkey around with stolen goods.”

I touched his arm. “Sure, Abe — I know. But if you call the police now, you lose the eight hundred bucks. All I want is a little time. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t stolen, and maybe I can find the owner. Then you might get your money back — with interest.”

“You goin’ to give that ticket to the police?”

“I’ll give it back to my client, where I got it. Then it’s up to her.”

Abe grinned. “Okay. I forget you were here — for twenty-four hours.”

IV

I didn’t bother to call Muriel, since I figured she’d be waiting for me. I went straight to her apartment.

She looked even worse than when I saw her, earlier that morning. Crying and loss of sleep had left their marks. She still wore the black suit she had had on before.

“The police were here,” she said dully. “They went through everything. But they didn’t find what they expected. I didn’t tell them about the pawn ticket.” Her voice was husky, and her eyes were imploring. “Cory...”

I knew she was hoping I had something good to tell her. I sat down on the couch, pulled her down beside me and held her hands tight. I gave it to her straight.

“Ralph pawned an eight-thousand-dollar diamond bracelet. He got eight hundred bucks for it.”

I felt the tenseness in her hands as her body stiffened. Her face looked as if I had belted her right between the eyes. I had to soften the blow some way, so I said, “Muriel, do you have any idea where he could have got a bracelet like that?”

She shook her head numbly.

“He never had that kind of money, Cory. I’m sure he didn’t buy it.”

I had to give her the rest of it. “The bracelet wasn’t new. It had an inscription on it. It said, ‘to Anita — with love’.”

Her voice was dull. “Do the police know about it yet?”

“No. I know the pawnbroker. He won’t say anything, at least until to-morrow, unless I give him the word.”

A thought was nagging the back of my brain, but I wasn’t ready to let it out — not yet. So I said, “Muriel, you might as well face it. There’s only two ways Ralph could have gotten that bracelet. Either he stole it, or someone gave it to him. Either way, it doesn’t look good.”

She stood up and walked across the room, her arms folded over her breasts as though she were cold. She paused at the window and gazed out at the rain-swept sky. “What are you going to do now, Cory?” she asked.

I came up behind her and touched arms lightly. “Don’t worry, I’m not through with this yet. I’ve got a couple of ideas to run down this afternoon.” I swung her around, so her back was to the window.

“You need some sleep,” I said. “I suggest a good stiff drink, a hot bath and bed. I’ll call you to-night and let you know what I’ve got. Most of all, don’t worry.”

She smiled a thin little smile, and, on impulse, I bent over and touched her lips lightly with mine. I meant it for a gentle, friendly kiss — but the moment my lips touched hers, she came suddenly to life.

The mood seemed to leave her as swiftly as it had come. Suddenly, she jerked away from me, and heavy sobs shook her body. She covered her face with her hands.

“What’s the matter with me, Cory? Am I a chunk of ice, instead of a woman? Ralph didn’t think so when he married me. He loved me then. He wanted me.”

I was shocked by her outburst. “What on earth do you mean?”

“He’s hardly touched me for months. He’s been like a stranger.” She shivered, in spite of the warm room. “I’m frightened, Cory. I don’t want you to find out any more. I want you to tear up that pawn ticket and forget about the whole thing.”

“You know I can’t do that. Look — you’ve had a rough time for the past few hours, and now the shock’s beginning to wear off. You’re starting to feel again. That’s good, even if it is hard on you.”

“I know — I’m sorry for the — outburst.” She sighed and brushed the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I loved Ralph, and I just can’t believe it’s ended this way. It started out so good.”

She went to the little black lacquered cellarette in the corner of the room and extracted a bottle of brandy and two glasses. “I think I’ll have that drink now. I don’t like to drink alone.”

The brandy helped. Her eyes lost their haunted look, and her lips even curved in a faint, slow smile. I was seeing her now as a beautiful and desirable woman, instead of as the wife of a friend. Her feminine ego had taken a terrific beating, from what she had told me. So, I kissed her again. She was warm and alive in my arms.

“I’m glad you came here, Cory,” she whispered. “You’ve made me feel almost human again.”

I picked up my hat and topcoat. The rain-drenched street and the diamond bracelet didn’t seem nearly as important as the revelation left behind me in Muriel’s apartment. But I had work to do.

“I’ll call you to-night,” I said from the doorway. “You go to bed and get some sleep...”

V

The inquest was at 3.30. If I hurried, I thought, I’d probably be able to make it. Although I had known who Anthony Lorio was for a long time, I had never had the dubious pleasure of meeting him.

He had obviously been treated as a special guest of the City Police Department. The Oxford-grey flannel suit looked like Brooks Brothers to me, and the white shirt was fresh and immaculate. He carried a black topcoat, draped expensively over his arm, and a black homburg. A diamond the size of my little finger nail glittered on his freshly manicured left hand.

The only incongruous note to the whole sartorical picture was the white bandage which was pasted on the right side of his elegantly barbered black hair, and the long blue bruise which extended down from his temple under his right eye. He was about forty, and his slim, well-muscled figure indicated a rowing machine, a good masseur and, maybe, a little weight-lifting on the side.

It was open and shut. Lorio gave most of the testimony, telling how he had come into his apartment and flicked the light switch, to have nothing happen until the two men jumped him in the hallway. One had wielded the blackjack, but not until after Lorio had pulled his gun and fired three shots into the darkened room. When he came to, he had staggered to the phone and called the police. Then, while he was waiting, he found out the light bulbs had all been unscrewed from the lamps in the living room, dining room and hall.

“Was the room absolutely dark, Mr. Lorio?” The Coroner asked unctuously.

“There was a dim night light still on in the hall,” Lorio answered in clipped syllables that bore only the slightest trace of alien accent. “It’s one of those little lights that plug into the wallsocket. I keep it on all the time at night. They had evidently left it on, so as to be able to see what they were doing, but it wasn’t bright enough to distinguish much more than general objects.’”

Mrs. Lorio had been out of town, visiting friends, so no one else was in the apartment, the gambler continued. She had returned that morning, however. The only other people in the building had been two porters, who were cleaning in the club, and they hadn’t heard the disturbance.

“Did you get to see enough of the man who got away to be able to describe him?” the Coroner asked.

“No. Both men were only dim shapes. It wasn’t until after I got the lights on that I knew I had hit one of them.

“Kingston was lying on the floor in the living room, just inside the door,” Lorio said. “His Detective Special was still in his hand. There was no sign of the blackjack, so evidently the man who got away had taken it.”

“Where was the money?”

“In the inside pocket of my jacket. The second man evidently got scared when he found out Kingston had been hit. So he beat it without searching me.”

The testimony concluded with the information that Kingston had been shot three times in the chest with bullets identified as coming from Lorio’s .32 Baretta — that he had been facing Lorio, about six feet from him, when he was shot, and that his own gun was drawn but not fired.

The verdict was in, almost before the jurors went out. It was obvious their collective minds were already made up. It was justifiable homicide, with a recommendation that Lorio be released immediately, and no charges made.

I didn’t particularly want to see Ralph Kingston, but, after the inquest was over, I forced myself to withdraw the sheet and look at him. It wasn’t that I minded looking on death. I had seen a lot of it, too damn much on beachheads up and down Italy during the war. I had seen the horror of it and the finality of it, I had smelled the putrefaction of it, until a dead man was just another object to be got out of the way.

But Ralph Kingston was a man I had known for ten years. I knew that he had liked his steaks cooked rare, preferred cognac to straight bonded bourbon, knew the kind of women he liked. I knew how he had dreamed of a day when he could have a little ranch in the lush, fertile bayou country, and raise purebred cattle and a few racehorses. Ralph wasn’t a violent man — he was a good cop, who did his job well, but his heart wasn’t in it.

He could have been asleep. His blond hair was crisp and curly, slightly disarranged as it always was. His lean face was smooth and unlined, and I noticed, for the first time, that he had incredibly long eyelashes for a man. But there was no evidence of that last violent struggle before death blotted out everything it had taken 33 years of living to build. There was no hint of what had precipitated his final headlong flight to oblivion.

There was only one thing I knew for certain. If Ralph had been framed, I was going to clear him. It was my duty as his friend to leave his name clean, if he was innocent. That was the least I could do.

VI

I knew where I had to start. Why would a man like Lorio want to frame Kingston? If there was a frame, it had to start with Lorio. I could only think of two reasons. One would be something in connection with Ralph’s business as a cop — the other might have something to do with Ralph’s indifference to his beautiful and loving wife for the past few months.

I caught a cab and rode through the grey dusk to the Times-Picayune building. I might find what I wanted to know in the City Directory, and, if not, some checking of the newspaper files should produce results. I found it in the City Directory — Mrs. Lorio’s first name was Anita.

I went on up to the editorial offices and located a friend of mine named Tommy Drake, who wrote a gossip column. Tommy knew the ins and outs of the city’s night life like nobody else in town. I was sure he’d know a lot about the Lorios.

It was too early for him to begin his evening rounds, and I found Tommy with his feet propped up on his desk and his hat pulled down over his eyes. He was snoring gently. The rest of the place was practically deserted.

I flipped the brim of his hat so that it fell down over his face. He jumped as if he had been shot. Then, when he saw me, he grinned, yawned and rubbed his hand over his blond, slightly bald head.

“Oh — it’s you — the great private eye! Working on a hot case, Investigator?”

“I don’t know how hot it is, but at least it’s a case.” I perched on the edge of the desk, pulled out a Lucky and salvaged a kitchen match that was propped behind Tommy’s left ear. “You look all done in. How about a beer, a ham sandwich and a little information?”

Tommy yawned again, then pushed his hat back on his head. “I was just catching my evening nap — can’t do it at home with three kids around.” He grinned and removed a limp trench coat from the coat-rack. “The beer sounds good, but let’s make it a steak at Joe’s around the corner. I need nourishment this evening. And I’ll try to oblige with the information.”

Joe’s was steamy with the fragrance of stale beer and fried onions. There was a massive bar running the length of the room, and red checkered cloths on the tables. A typical, pleasant hangout for the gentlemen of the press — the steaks were good and rare, and the beer was frosty cold.

“Now — what’s this information you want?”

“What do you know about Anthony Lorio’s wife?”

He whistled. “Boy, you are working on a hot case! That wench is pure, unadulterated TNT.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lorio married her about two years ago. She was a singer in his club. Came here from Detroit, or some place up north. She’s some dish to see — thirty-six-inch bust, narrow waist, undulating hips — all on a strictly high-class plane, of course.” He gulped down the rest of his beer.

“What does she look like from the neck up?”

“She’s beautiful! But with a torso like she’s got, who cares?” He pulled himself up from the slouch he’d been assuming, and leaned across the table. “Say, what is this, Cory? If you’ve got any ideas, you’d better get rid of them fast! Lorio’s crazy about that girl, and he’s jealous as hell. He likes to keep Anita around to dress the club, but you just look — mustn’t touch. That guy plays for keeps.”

“I’ve got to talk to her, Tommy — alone.”

“Boy, you’re askin’ for it.” He grinned. “All I can say is, you sure make yours the hard way.”

“This is strictly business.” I glanced at my watch, picked up the check, and tossed a dollar bill on the table. When Tommy made a grab for the check, I said, “This is on me, Tommy. The information was worth it.”

“Maybe I should have kept my big mouth shut. I’d hate to see that beautiful kisser of yours get all uglied up.” He picked up hat and trench coat and followed me to the cashier’s stand.

“Tell you what I’ll do, Cory,” Tommy said. “I’ll be going to the Peacock Club, myself, a little later on. If you want to go on out and hang around the bar, when I get there I’ll see if I can wangle an introduction for you. Then, if you should manage to engage her in a conversation, it’ll all be on the up and up.”

“A guy can’t ask for better co-operation than that. I’ll take you up on it, Tommy.”

“You got your car here?”

“I came in a cab. I’ll go on out to my place, pick up my car and drive on out.”

“Okay, Sport — see you later. Stay out of trouble till I show.”

The Peacock Club was an old plantation building of the type of architecture known in New Orleans as Steamboat Gothic. It was northwest of the city, near the river. The spacious grounds, which were once the site of formal gardens in the front and slave quarters in the rear, had been converted into a parking lot, where patrons could park in shadowy obscurity under the moss-draped liveoaks.

Twin stairways, resembling those of the gaudy Mississippi riverboats, led to the gallery fronting the main floor, where the bar and dining room were located. The entire second floor consisted of the gambling rooms and another bar, and were reachable only after a careful screening by some of Lorio’s watchdogs. The Lorio’s apartment, I decided, must be on the third floor.

I parked my Mercury convertible next to a long black Cadillac and made my way to the bar. I had been to the Peacock Club a time or two, back in the more lucrative postwar days, when I had come home with a Captain’s mustering-out pay and a yen to have a good time and forget about the war.

It hadn’t changed. It was still plushy and dimly-lighted, with a huge horseshoe mahogany bar and ornate barstools, in keeping with the flavour of the place.

I ordered a rye and soda, and sat down to wait for Tommy. I felt conspicuous. It was early, and the place was thinly populated. I hoped Lorio was busy upstairs, some place. I had a feeling he wouldn’t like seeing me there, after I’d put in an appearance at the inquest.

Tommy came in about ten o’clock. I was on my third rye, and the place was filling up. He was still wearing the baggy tweeds he had had on earlier, and the battered trench coat hung limply over his arm.

“Come on — let’s circulate,” he said. “You won’t find what you’re looking for in here.”

I followed him across the crowded dining room, where a six-piece band was beating out a frantic mambo, to a broad carpeted stairway at the back.

He mumbled something to a tuxedo-clad gorilla who stood guard over the stairs, then turned to me and said, “You wait at that table there in the corner. I’ll be back.”

I sat down at the table, ordered another rye from the waiter who materialised at my elbow and watched the dancers on the crowded floor. Most of them could have stood a few trips to Arthur Murray’s. A few minutes later, Tommy was back. I all but gasped when I saw what he had with him.

Anita Lorio was a dish, all right. Her hair was silvery blonde, and it coiled smoothly over her shoulders. Her eyes, as nearly as I could tell, were green. He had described her from the neck down very accurately, and the whole enticing collection of curves and bulges was covered — if that’s the word for it — by a strapless black gown that glittered with sequins.

“This is Cory Andrews, an old pal of mine from Detroit,” he said. Then glibly to me, “Tony was busy, so I asked him if I could borrow Anita to throw out the red carpet.” He pulled out a chair for her, sat down and ordered brandy for her and a straight shot of Old Forrester for himself.

We tossed off some inconsequential conversation while Tommy tossed off his drink, and I watched Anita Lorio. She reminded me of one of those beautiful department store dummies. There was absolutely no expression on her face. It could have been boredom, it could have been stupidity, it could have been just plain shock.

Finally, Tommy said, “I’ve got to mingle and pick up some dirt for my column. See you later.”

I didn’t waste any time getting to the point. I said to the girl, “I’ve got something of yours I think you’d like to have back. I’ll sell it to you — for some information.”

The dead pan didn’t change. She toyed with her glass, took a dainty sip of the brandy and said, “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

“It’s bright and glittery, it cost about eight thousand bucks,” and it has an inscription on the back that says, “To Anita — with love.”

It wasn’t a sigh that passed through her body, it was more of a shudder. Her eyes looked almost black in the dim light. Finally she managed to say, “Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m a friend of Ralph Kingston’s. He didn’t steal that bracelet. You gave it to him.”

The dead pan was all gone — it had crumbled with fright. I had rung the bell on that last one.

VII

I thought she was going to leap at me right across the table. “For goodness sake! Tell me where it is, so I can get it back. And don’t get yourself mixed up in this. It’s none of your business.”

I could feel eyes all around me, boring holes in my back. “Get control of yourself,” I whispered fiercely. “I want to talk to you, and I know I haven’t much time.”

“No — I won’t tell you a thing! Get out of here quickly and don’t come back.”

“Okay — no talk, no bracelet — and the police will have it first thing in the morning. Also, every reporter in town will have a complete description of it.”

The tears in her eyes looked real, and the fingertips that touched my hand were like ice. “Please! You don’t know what you’re getting into! Get away from here, and forget you ever saw me, or the bracelet!”

I held my ground. “Look, Baby — I drive a hard bargain, where murder’s concerned. I happen to have a personal interest in this murder. So finish your drink — and give!”

She picked up the fragile glass and drained it in one gulp. “I can’t talk here. Do you have a car?”

I nodded. “Then drive around to the back, and I’ll meet you at the stairs. Only for goodness sake — be careful.”

I motioned for the waiter and smiled benignly. “You go on back upstairs. It’s a light blue Mercury convertible. I’ll be there in ten minutes. And you had better be there, or I call my friend Lieutenant Tracy Evans.”

She drifted back toward the stairs, and I saw her pause and say something to gorilla-face. She seemed to have regained her composure. I paid the check, tipped the waiter a dollar and retrieved my hat and coat from the check stand. Then I eased myself out into the wet night.

The wind had shifted to the south, and the rain had turned into a foggy mist. I groped my way to the Mercury, and sat there for a few minutes before starting the motor. No one followed me out.

I gunned the motor gently, slid out of the parking space and drove around the building. At the stairway, I eased the car to a stop, but left the motor idling. A minute later, the right door opened. A long hooded black cloak made her just another dim shadow in the night.

“Where to?”

“I can’t stay long. If Tony misses me, he’ll know something’s up. Drive down the road a little way. There are plenty of trees, and no one will see us.”

I parked under a big live oak just off the road. The rain dripped off the tree on to the canvas top, sounding like hailstones in the sudden quiet. I offered her a cigarette and lighted it for her.

Then I said, “Now give. What went on between you and Ralph Kingston?”

She started crying. Deep, tearing sobs that shook her whole body. That made me uncomfortable, so I took her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Stop it! He’s dead, and that won’t bring him back. I want to know why.”

She stopped crying. “I gave Ralph the bracelet to pawn for me. I needed some money, and I couldn’t ask Tony for it. He’d have wanted to know why, and I couldn’t possibly have told him.” I could feel the hate in her face, even though I couldn’t see it.

“I wish now I’d never married him. I don’t love him, I never did. But I thought it was a pretty soft berth I was walking into.” She pulled the cloak closer around her shoulders. “He’s a beast, and he’s terribly jealous. I fell pretty hard for Ralph, and I thought maybe he was the answer to everything. But then...” her shoulder stiffened next to mine.

“But then what?”

“He couldn’t see it that way.” She drew away from me. “Do you have another cigarette?”

“You knew he was married, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t at first. When I found out, it was too late.”

I handed her the lighted cigarette. “What did you need the money for, Anita?”

“One of the maids saw Ralph and me together. She threatened to tell Tony, unless I paid her off.” Her voice was dull.

“How long had you known Ralph?”

“I met him about five months ago. Tony had a little trouble with the police. Ralph came out several times, and then I began meeting him away from the club. When I knew Tony would be away, sometimes Ralph would come up to the apartment. He’d use the back outside stairs. It was one of those times when the maid saw him.”

She rolled down the window on her side, and her cigarette made a tiny arc of light in the fog. She was crying again, and I sat quietly, letting her get it out of her system. I felt sorry for her, but not nearly as sorry as I did for Ralph.

I thought I could see the whole picture now. She had been playing around with Ralph — Lorio had found out about it, had framed Ralph and shot him in cold blood. He had got rid of his adversary, and, at the same time, he probably figured it would teach Anita a lesson. No doubt, it had.

Ralph’s side wasn’t hard to figure, either. She was a beautiful woman, one to turn any man’s head. Maybe he had even fallen in love with her. It was the same old story. It had been going on since Adam and Eve.

I pulled out fresh cigarettes and lit them. “There wasn’t any attempted robbery, was there, Anita? The whole thing was a frame-up.”

She shook her head, but didn’t answer my question directly.

“Please — I don’t want to talk about it. If Tony knew, he’d kill me.”

“When did he send you out of town?”

I felt her grow tense. “I haven’t been out of town. When did he tell you that?”

I grabbed her arm. “You mean you were there last night?”

“Yes — but why? What difference does that make?”

To me, it made a lot of difference. I flipped on the ignition, and pressed the starter.

“Are we going back to the club now?” she asked.

“No — we’re going to Police Headquarters.”

Her fingers clutched my arm, and her voice was frantic. “No — no! We can’t! Don’t you understand? If I go there with you, it will be all over town by morning. He’ll kill me!”

She was right — she wouldn’t live fifty minutes, once the word got out. If the police got to Lorio first, someone else would do the job for him. There had to be another way. Besides, there was still something missing. I wasn’t sure just what it was, but I knew I had to find the whole answer before I began talking.

Then I remembered the guy Lorio said had got away, and the wicked wound on the side of Lorio’s head. He had to have an accomplice.

“Who was the other man in on the deal, Anita?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know just what happened.” She tugged at my arm. “Please — let’s go back now. I’ve been away too long, and I’m afraid.”

VIII

The parking lot was almost full, and the cars and dripping trees were shadowy wraiths in the fog. I coasted around the building, and stopped where I thought the stairs were.

She pressed my hand in the darkness and quietly opened the door on her side. “You’d better get away from here now,” she said. “Whatever you do, be careful.” Then she was gone.

I tried to watch her to the top of the stairs, but the fog swirled between us. I wasn’t aware of any danger until the door on my side jerked open and I felt something cold and round pressed against my neck.

“Okay, Buster — this is the end of the line for you.”

The only thing I could tell about the voice was that it was rough and masculine. Automatically, I slid out of the car. Then, on impulse, I ducked and turned to face my assailant, swinging wildly. My fist connected with soft, spongy flesh, and I heard him grunt. Then something hard smashed into the right side of my head.

A thousand tiny lights exploded somewhere behind my eyes, and I was spinning through an endless black funnel, towards a pinpoint of light a million miles away. While I was spinning, I could hear her screaming faintly.

I couldn’t have been out for long, because I came to there on the wet ground beside my car, where I had gone out. My head felt about three sizes too big, and every inch of it was throbbing. I touched it gently on the right side, where it hurt the most, and my fingers came away wet and sticky.

Then, as I touched it, a thought exploded in my brain, making my head hurt worse than ever. I suddenly remembered Lorio’s bandaged head. He had been sapped on the right side, too. And, since I had been facing my assailant, he’d have had to wield his gun with his left hand.

I picked myself up off the ground, and grabbed the still-open door of the car for support. My legs felt like molasses, and waves of nausea rose from the pit of my stomach. I could hear voices in the darkness, and a wobbly beam of light was just barely discernible from the lights that still danced behind my eyes.

Someone was coming. Perhaps it was one of Lorio’s boys, coming to finish the job. Or perhaps, someone had heard the commotion and was coming to investigate. But whoever it was, I wasn’t quite ready for them to find me.

Another thought struck me. There hadn’t been any commotion, except in my head. I hadn’t let out a peep.

Something icy prickled down my pine. Anita must have screamed, from the top of the stairs.

I snatched my keys from the ignition and crept around the front of the car. I made what I hoped was a silent dash for the dense shrubs which surrounded the building.

The voices and the light got nearer, and I knew they were on the other side of the Mercury. I hoped they couldn’t hear the pounding of my head across the twenty feet that separated us.

I heard one of them mutter an obscenity, and their footsteps scraped off around the end of the building. The stupes thought I had gone back to the club, and, for the moment, I was happy to let them think so.

I was right at the foot of the staircase. It was fairly wide and went straight up the wall of the building to the third floor, like a fire-escape. I grasped the rail to steady myself and climbed up.

The door at the top of the stairway was a solid wood panel. It was bolted tightly from the inside. There wasn’t a chance in the world of my getting it open.

I eased myself back down the stairs and got in my car. I wanted it around the front, where I could get to it in a hurry if I had to. I found a parking place, cut the motor, fumbled in the glove compartment for some Kleenex.

My hand touched the pint of Old Crow I keep there for emergencies, so I unscrewed the top and took a good-sized gulp. It helped to clear my head up a little bit, but it still throbbed abominably.

I daubed at the sticky mess on the side of my head with the Kleenex and hoped it didn’t look too bad. It would have to do until I could get to the men’s room.

I hadn’t bled much, and, fortunately, none had dripped down on my clothes. I was just splashing cold water on my face when the door opened behind me. I turned around and saw Tony Lorio, and he didn’t look too happy. Behind him, were Gorilla-Face and a little guy with bushy eyebrows and a soft, spongy belly. He was holding a gun in his left hand, and the paunch looked just like the one I had hit before I got clipped.

“Okay, Andrews — come along with us,” Lorio said in his clipped voice. “You’re gettin’ too damn nosy.”

“And you’ve got plenty of reason for not wanting anyone to get nosy, haven’t you, Tony?”

He stayed calm. “Besides, you talk too much.”

“I haven’t even begun to talk yet. Why did you frame Ralph Kingston, Tony?”

His black eyes grew even blacker. “That matter is closed, Andrews. You should have left it alone.”

Anger was taking precedence over my better judgment. “Kingston was a friend of mine, Tony. You may be a big shot in this town, but you can’t get away with this. I’m going to see it through to the finish.”

Lorio motioned to the little paunchy guy with the gun. “Take him downstairs, Artie. This guy needs to be taught a lesson.”

The little gun was barely the size of Artie’s fat hand, but it felt big when he nuzzled it up against my back.

“... and don’t you let out a peep, Andrews,” Lorio warned. “Remember, you’re in my territory now.”

I didn’t have much choice in the matter, so I followed Lorio out of the men’s room. Gorilla-Face and Artie were right behind me. I was really in a jam, and I knew it.

We traipsed across the dining room and headed towards the door leading to the kitchen. I knew I didn’t have long to figure out an angle, but my mind refused to work.

And then I saw Tommy. He was pushing his way across the dance floor towards us. I could have kissed him. I saw Lorio scowl and felt the pressure of the gun against my ribs subside.

“Where the hell have you been, Cory? I’m ready to leave.” Then he hesitated, when the full impact of my entourage hit him. “Hey! What’s going on?”

“Is this guy a friend of yours, Tommy?” Lorio said.

“Sure he is. He came out here with me.”

“Then you’d better take him home. And tell him to stay the hell away from my wife.”

I didn’t trust Lorio as far as I could see him, and I knew I hadn’t reached the end of this little affair. As soon as we were gone, he’d have some of his boys out gunning for me.

Tommy Drake wasn’t looking too happy, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him. When we were alone, he said, “You sure put me on the spot with Lorio, Cory. I didn’t like that little piece of by-play a bit. I warned you not to get too chummy with Anita. He’s crazy about that girl.”

“Look, Tommy — before the night is over, I hope to prove something to the police that will give you a nice beat for your paper. Right now, I need your help.”

“You mean, something concerning Anita Lorio?”

“She’s concerned, all right. By the way, do you know who Lorio’s little friend with the paunch is?”

“Sure — that’s Artie Green. He’s one of Lorio’s favourite trouble shooters. Now, look, Cory—”

“You look, Tommy. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how I can stay alive through the night.” I jerked my head around so it was in front of his face, and he could see the cut. “I didn’t get that playing football. For your information, when you came in, Artie had a gun in my back.”

Tommy’s eyes popped. He was a little slow on the take, but once he got it, he could carry the ball pretty fast. “What do you want me to do, Cory?”

IX

I pulled him toward the doorway, and glanced back at the headwaiter, who was scowling at us ominously. “Call Lieutenant Evans at Homicide. Tell him it’s urgent, and to come with some of his men out here right away. Tell him I’m going to blow the Kingston murder sky high — in about ten minutes.”

He was already fishing in his pocket for telephone change. “You’d better give him time to get here first.”

“There isn’t any time left,” I answered. “By the way, have you seen Anita in the last fifteen or twenty minutes?”

“No, not since I left you with her. Hell, Cory...!”

“Look, Tommy — I don’t have time for explanations now. Do you know if there’s a back way to get upstairs to Lorio’s apartment? Inside, I mean.”

“Sure, but it’s through the kitchen.”

“Okay — you make that call, then stick around until Evans gets here. Tell him I’ve gone upstairs.” I tossed my hat and topcoat to him. “Here — watch these for me.”

I left him before he could put up a protest and headed straight for the archway that led to the kitchen. Everyone was busy, and, outside of a couple of waiters gaping at me stupidly, no one tried to stop me.

I found the back stairway and went right up. The door at the top opened into a small service bar which, in turn, opened into the gambling rooms.

It was a sweet setup. There was the usual assortment of roulette, dice and keno tables. An archway at the front led into a room where three card tables were going. The furnishings were lavish, the patrons expensively dressed.

I saw two intent-looking, tuxedo-clad gentlemen bearing down on me. Both had suspicious looking bulges under the left sides of their jackets. I spotted the door of the men’s room, practically at my elbow, and ducked inside. There was no lock on the door, so I shoved a leather chair in front of it, found the window and pushed it up.

I was in luck. It opened on a fire escape, which went up, as well as down. I went out through the window, pushed it shut behind me and started climbing.

The window at the top was also unlocked and opened into a dark chamber that appeared to be a bedroom. I tiptoed across a thick carpet to the door, which had a crack of light showing underneath. I could hear voices in the next room.

I eased my automatic out of my shoulder-holster and flipped off the safety catch. Then, I quietly turned the knob and opened the door.

She was crouched in a low yellow armchair. Behind her, in a small dining alcove, a table was set for two. The only light in the alcove came from two candelabra with yellow tapers. The dim light made a nimbus of her pale blonde hair.

Lorio stood between her and the doorway I had just entered, with his back to me. It had been his voice I had heard from the bedroom.

“How much did you tell Andrews, Anita? You shouldn’t have talked to him. I had everything all fixed for you, baby — all nice and neat. Now, I’ll have to get rid of him, and send you away someplace.”

“No, Tony — no! I swear I didn’t say anything to him!”

“You left the club with him, didn’t you?” His laugh was short and ugly. “Or was this like it was with Kingston? I’m sorry I covered up for you now, I don’t think you’re worth it.”

“Tony! How can you say such things! You know I appreciate what you did.”

“Just remember, Anita — next time, you’ll have to take your own rap for murder.”

She had been easing herself up from the chair and was now perched on the arm. As I opened the door, she saw me and screamed.

Her silver bag lay on the corner of the table in the alcove. As she lunged for it, the weight of her body against the table sent one of the candelabra crashing against the window. She didn’t seem to notice it. When she turned around, I saw the little revolver in her hand.

“Stay back both of you!” her voice was shrill. “Stay back, or I’ll shoot you both!”

I aimed carefully, as her gun pointed directly at Lorio’s chest. And then I fired.

The gun dropped from her hand, and she crumpled slowly to the floor. Her eyes were open, and she clutched convulsively at her shoulder. The blood oozed between her fingers. Lorio still stood in the centre of the room.

I crossed to where she lay beside the table, my gun still in my hand. Then, Lorio came to life. Before I could reach her, he was on his knees beside her.

“Anita... Anita, baby!”

“That’s funny — it doesn’t hurt,” she whispered.

“It won’t be fatal,” I remarked, as I stooped and picked up her gun. “You killed Ralph Kingston, Anita. And Tony framed the phoney robbery to cover up for you. Why did you do it? Was he walking out on you?”

I didn’t really expect an answer. And then simultaneously I saw the tongue of flame licking up the drape from the overturned candelabra and heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. The front door burst open, and I saw Tracy Evans.

“Look out, Cory!” he cried. “That curtain’s on fire!”

I turned around and gazed in fascination as the flames licked up towards the ceiling through the soft drapery material. I shook my head, and slowly came back to reality.

The room was bursting with activity. Tracy was saying to someone behind him, “Get down there and tell them to clear the building. Then for Pete’s sake, get a fire extinguisher up here!”

He looked at Anita. “Who shot her?”

“I did,” I said flatly. “She was gunning for Lorio — and me, too.”

Tracy motioned with drawn pistol. “Get your wife, Lorio and walk in front of me. Let’s get out of here. This place is going up like a tinder box.”

I could feel the heat of the flames on my back as we reached the stairs. As we got to the bottom, two men carrying fire extinguishers pushed by us and went up. I didn’t think they were going to have much luck.

X

I followed Tracy around to the parking lot in front. Patrons were streaming out of the place in hysterical confusion. In the distance, sirens wailed with increasing intensity.

We walked about a hundred yards from the building, and Tracy stopped. “I’ll get one of my men to give her first-aid until the ambulance comes,” he said.

Lorio was still holding her. She was shivering in the damp fog. I stripped off my jacket and put it over her shoulders. I was still holding my gun, and I kept it trained on Lorio.

“You framed that phoney holdup to cover up for her, didn’t you, Tony?” I shook my head. “Boy, what a sucker you were! She would have killed you, too, if I hadn’t got her first.”

His face was grim, and, before he could answer, Tracy was back with two of his men. Tommy Drake was tagging along behind him. The crazy fool was still carrying my hat and topcoat.

“Ye gods!” He exclaimed. “When you get into trouble, Cory, you really do it in a big way!”

I took the coat and put it on, and gave him the bare facts quickly. Then, I left him standing there, before he could start asking questions.

Tracy was bearing down on me. “Now, for Pete’s sake, Cory. Tell me what happened,” he pleaded.

I gave it to him fast, about Muriel and the pawn ticket, and my conversation with Anita. “When she said she was right here, and not out of town like Lorio said, I got to thinking. He’s crazy about her, and jealous as sin of any man who even looks like he’s making a pass at her. She told me she was in pretty deep with Kingston, so it all added up.

“Either Lorio framed Kingston to get him out of the way, or he framed the robbery to cover up for Anita. I wasn’t positive which, until that little scene you walked in on upstairs. She shot Kingston, and Lorio tried to get her out of it.”

“What about the jewellery in Kingston’s car? It was stolen several weeks ago?”

“Maybe a slob named Artie Green can tell us something about that. He’s Lorio’s topkick. I don’t think Lorio would stoop to larceny, but I wouldn’t put it past Green.”

I pulled out my wallet, and took out the pawn ticket. “Here’s what started the whole thing.”

I suddenly remembered I hadn’t seen Green since I left him and Lorio in the dining room. “By the way, Green clipped me with his left hand, and I’m willing to bet Lorio got him to wield the blackjack last night the same way. If you don’t find him here, he’s probably at my place — waiting to plug me on Lorio’s orders.”

Tracy gripped my arm and said, “It looks like you were right this time, Cory.” Then he scowled. “But you should have come to me with that pawn ticket the first thing.”

“I couldn’t until I was sure I was on the right track, Tracy,” I told him. “After all, you could have been right, and I could have been wrong.”

He grinned. “You look terrible. You’d better go home and clean up and get some sleep. Come down to my office in the morning, and you can give me a signed statement. I’ll put out a pick-up right away on this Artie Green, and I’ll take Lorio in myself. He and Green will be charged as accessories, and Mrs. Lorio will be charged with Kingston’s murder.”

I was almost home when I suddenly pulled in to the kerb and stopped the car. I was dead-tired and sick to my stomach — and I had just remembered Muriel.

She was wearing a long, white, wool robe, and she smelled sweet and feminine. She was also wide awake. She gasped when she saw me, and I realised I wasn’t exactly presentable for calling.

I grinned, told her I was all right, and let her push me into a chair, pour a drink and hand it to me. Then I gave her a brief and very sketchy outline of what had happened. I didn’t tell her much about Anita, though. I could fill her in on the details later. Then, I called Tracy Evans’ office.

“We’ve got it all wrapped up,” Evans said. “We picked up Green and got statements from all three of them.

“Kingston had gone there to see Anita earlier, to tell her he was through. She had told him to come up the back stairs to the apartment. When she found out what he had come for, she lost her head, grabbed Tony’s gun from the desk and shot him. She told Lorio Kingston had followed her upstairs and made a pass at her.

“Then, Lorio and Green framed the robbery, after the club closed. Green came up with the brilliant idea of planting the things in Kingston’s car, including the jewellery he’s confessed he stole himself. Then, Green clipped Lorio to make the whole thing look better, and left. We know what happened then.”

I replaced the phone, as Muriel poured another drink and daubed at the cut on my head with a wet washcloth she had fetched from the bathroom.

“You can’t go home like this, Cory.” She glanced at the electric clock on the mantle. “Besides, it’s nearly four o’clock. You might as well stay here.”

I grinned, reached up and pulled her down on my lap. I decided it was the best proposition I had had all day.

Sunday’s Slaughter

by Jonathan Craig

Four times the maniac had killed — but his madness was no match for the sanity of Henry Ferris!

* * * *

There was, a large knothole in one of the boards near the room of Henry Ferris’ barn. It was in the north wall, just beneath the eaves, and it gave Henry an unobstructed view of his orchard, and the oblong knoll just beyond. The knoll was not on Henry’s property — it was part of the Kimberly’s place — and it was where Colleen Kimberly came, every Sunday afternoon, to set up her easel and her canvas chair, and paint the things she saw around her.

Colleen was old Sam Kimberly’s only daughter, and she was the prettiest girl Henry had ever seen. He had begun noticing her about a year ago, when she just turned seventeen, and he hadn’t really been able to think about much else ever since. Colleen had blonde hair, like rain-washed wheat, and blue eyes that looked almost black until you got close to her, and, lately, her figure had filled out until it made Henry hurt just to look at her.

Henry was looking at her now, with the help of a ladder pushed against the wall of the hayloft and an old brass-cased spyglass. This was the hottest day they had had all summer, and Colleen had hiked up her skirt, to make herself a little cooler. Henry grinned slyly, wondering how fast she’d pull that skirt down again, if she knew he was watching her.

“It’d come down damn fast, I’ll bet,” he said aloud. He often talked to himself, working alone so much. “And, oh! — wouldn’t she blush, though!” He shifted the spyglass to his other eye and adjusted the focus, so that he could see the play of the slanting sunlight across the almost imperceptible golden down on Colleen’s tapering thighs. “If she only knew I was up here! he thought. Man, if she only even suspected!”

He had talked to Colleen twice. The first time had been five weeks ago, when he had driven himself so nearly crazy in the hayloft that he’d felt he simply had to be closer to her. He had crossed the orchard and ambled over to the knoll, and stood watching her paint for a long time, before she noticed him at all. When she did, she didn’t seem to mind his being there. She didn’t even seem surprised. She had just smiled at him and gone back to her painting of a plum tree.

“That’s real pretty,” Henry had said. “It sure enough looks just like an old plum tree, all right.” It was hard for a man to know exactly what to say to her, Henry reflected. Folks hereabouts said Colleen wasn’t quite bright, and that that was the reason her pa didn’t send her to the high school in town, and wouldn’t let her go out with boys.

But hell, folks hereabouts were always saying mean things like that, especially about girls as pretty as Colleen. Why, they had even said he wasn’t bright, too. He had heard it said more than once — just as if a man could run a farm like this one, year after year, and take care of a wife that was paralysed from the waist down and all, unless he was pretty bright.

Hell, he was brighter than any of them! They were just jealous of him, because he was such a damn good farmer, that was all. Just like they were jealous of Colleen, because she was so pretty.

Colleen hadn’t answered him when he complimented her painting of the plum tree. He stepped closer and squinted at the canvas, and nodded slowly. “Yes, Sir,” he said. “It sure looks like that old plum tree’ll be popping out with fruit any minute now. It’s a right nice piece of work, Miss.”

The girl had smiled up at him and made another dab with her brush. “Thank you,” she said. “I... I’ve been working on it for a long time.” It was then Henry saw that her eyes were really blue, instead of black, the way they had looked through the spyglass.

“Must get mighty lonesome for you sometimes,” he said. “I mean, the way your pa keeps you penned up here, so tight and all.”

Colleen had stopped smiling, and her eyes seemed a little cloudy.

“Me, I get pretty lonesome too,” Henry said. “I don’t get off the place more’n two, three times a month.” He paused. “What with my wife being an invalid and all, I have to stick pretty close.”

Colleen had nodded solemnly and lowered her brush. She sat very still, and a sudden fragment of breeze brought Henry the sweet, slightly-dizzying girl-scent of her.

“If it wasn’t for your pa and my wife,” Henry went on, “you and me might...” He broke off, his mouth suddenly dry. “I mean, we might — well, go to a church supper or something. Maybe even to a movie in town.”

The girl tilted her head to look up at him. “But you have a wife,” she said.

“Maybe not for long, though,” Henry said, trying to sound casual “The doc says she hasn’t got much of her row left to hoe.”

Colleen nodded, her face almost expressionless.

Henry swallowed hard, trying to get the dryness out of his throat. “If... if something happened to her, and if I could make it right with your pa... I mean, would you...?”

The girl frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then raised her brush again and concentrated very intently on the addition of some foliage to her plum tree. “If things were different,” she said. “If they really were, I might.”

Henry had wanted to say more, much more, but he had been physically unable to talk. He had stood beside the girl a full minute before he realised he’d have to get away from her, before he lost control of himself and did something he’d be sorry for. This should have been one of the happiest moments of his life, he thought bitterly as he trudged back to his own farm. But it wasn’t... it was one of the worst.

Things wouldn’t get any different, he knew — not for months and months, maybe even years. Martha might linger for goodness knew how long. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a thing he could do. The property was all in Martha’s name, even down to the rakes and hoes. He could leave Martha, sure — but what then?

All he knew how to do was farm. If he went somewhere else, all he’d be was a hired man. This way, at least he didn’t have to take orders from anybody except Martha — and he had his spyglass and his knothole in the bam wall.

The second time Henry talked to Colleen he had seen her father approaching before he’d been on the knoll more than a minute or two. But he had satisfied himself that he could have her, if it wasn’t for Martha. With Martha dead, and Colleen and he safely married, there wasn’t anything Colleen’s pa could do.

To-day, Henry had spent almost two hours watching Colleen through the spyglass, and now the longing for her had become too strong to bear. He took one last look at the firm, sunbathed thighs beneath the hiked-up skirt, then climbed back down the ladder and hid the spyglass in the hay...

The pickup truck pulled into the yard, just as Henry came through the barn door. There were two bloodhounds in a cage on the back of the truck, and the white lettering on the door of the cab read, Sheriff’s Office — Miller County. Riding in the seat beside the driver was Constable Jim Weber, from town. Weber and the other man got out and walked over to Henry. Weber carried a double barrelled shotgun crooked in his arm. The other man carried a rifle.

“Afternoon, Henry,” the constable said. “This here is Deputy Sheriff Bob Ellert. Bob, this is Henry Ferris. That was his field you was admiring so, up the road a ways.”

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” Henry said.

The deputy nodded and crossed his arms. He was a big man, even bigger than Constable Weber, and he looked hot and uncomfortable, in his khaki uniform with the leather leggings and heavy Sam Browne belt. “Hotter’n the hinges themselves, Mr. Ferris,” he said.

“That’s for sure,” Henry said. “I been looking for it to rain. A good rain’d cool things off a bit.”

“There’s another one loose, Henry,” the constable said.

“What?” Henry said. “Oh... you mean from the asylum?”

“Yeah. And this is a mean one, Henry. He’s one of these maniacs. He got him a meat-cleaver out of the kitchen somehow, and killed a guard with it and got loose. Next thing we hear, he’s taken the cleaver to old, Mrs. Kurtz, over Lordville way. Cut her up like sidemeat.”

“I swear,” Henry said. “You think he’s somewhere around here?”

“He just might be,” the deputy sheriff said. “We’re beating the whole county for him. The Sheriff’s Office and the State Police, and all the local peace officers, like Jim here.”

“We’re warning everybody,” the constable said. “We’re phoning some of them, and calling on the one that ain’t got phones. How’s your wife, Henry?”

Henry sighed. “She’s just the same, Jim, just the same.”

“That’s sure a pity,” the constable said.

“You see this maniac, Mr. Ferris, you call the constable,” the deputy sheriff said. “And don’t lose no time about it, either. That man chopped up two women before they put him away, and he’s chopped up two more people since. Who knows where he’ll stop, unless’n we get him fast.”

“He killed them with a hatchet,” the constable said. “The ones he killed before they put him away, I mean. I don’t know why they didn’t just up and Kang him, the way they should of done. Hell, putting a maniac like that in an asylum is just plain stupid!”

“That’s a fact,” the deputy sheriff said. “You won’t have any trouble recognising him, Mr. Ferris. He’s a big, tall old boy, with a face would scare hell out of almost anybody. He’s got him a face like a shovel.”

“That’s right,” the constable said. “I seen his picture.”

“He’s almost all jaw, that old boy is,” the deputy sheriff said. “Little scrunched-up forehead and crazy eyes, and this great big jaw jutting out there, just like a shovel.”

“Yeah,” the constable said. “It hangs out there like a cowcatcher on a train.” He patted the stock of his shotgun. “I got this old lady loaded up just right for him, too. I got me bird shot in one barrel, and buckshot in the other. If I holler halt, and he don’t do it, that bird shot ought to slow him down mighty fast. And if the bird shot don’t, the buckshot sure’r’n hell will. It’ll slow him down permanent!”

“I got my gun loaded the same way,” Henry said. “I been laying for some chicken thieves.”

The constable nodded. “Just don’t go shooting him, without you give him a chance to surrender, though.” He turned slightly to wink at the deputy sheriff. “Ain’t that right, Bob?”

The deputy grinned. “Sure,” he said. “We got to give him his just rights, like they say in the book.”

Henry grinned back, knowingly. “I’ll give him everything that’s coming to him, don’t worry.”

The constable patted the stock of his shotgun again and turned toward the pickup truck. “Well, we got to be rolling, Henry. There’s a lot of folks down the line haven’t got phones. We got to warn them.”

Henry was reluctant to give up his company so soon. He rarely had callers at all, much less for interesting reasons like this one. “I sure wish you could stay and pass the time of day,” he said hopefully.

“Some other time, Henry,” the constable said, climbing into the truck. He opened the door on the other side for the deputy and leaned back against the cushion. “Give my best to the missus,” he said. The deputy waved to Henry and started the motor.

Henry watched the truck circle around toward the rutted road that led up to the blacktop, and then he walked slowly toward the house and went inside.

Martha was sitting in her wheel-chair near the front door. She was pouring herself another table-spoonful of the patent medicine the doctor had told her was completely worthless. She paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth and scowled at Henry accusingly.

“Where’ve you been all this time?” she demanded, in her thin, — whining voice. “A body could die ten times over, for all you’d care.”

Henry said nothing. He watched Martha swallow the medicine and pour another spoonful. She was only twenty-seven, but she looked at least twenty years older than that. Since the stroke that had paralysed her legs, she had seemed to wither away slowly, day by day, until Henry could scarcely remember exactly what she had looked like when he married her.

Martha had been no raving beauty even then, Henry often reflected, and he often wondered how he had had enough stomach to marry her, even to get his hands on her farm. That was just the trouble — he’d never got his hands on it at all. Martha had let him work it for her, but she had kept it in her own name. He’d never own so much as a square inch of it until she died. The best he had been able to do was hold out a little of the egg money.

Martha swallowed the second spoonful of the medicine, grimaced and screwed the cap back on the bottle very carefully.

“Folks are talking about your never going to church, Henry,” she whined. “And about your working so much in the barn on Sundays. It isn’t right.”

“That barn ain’t no affair of theirs,” Henry said. “And how am I supposed to go to church? I’d be gone three hours or more. Then you’d really holler, for sure.”

“Not about your going to church, I wouldn’t.”

“Then, why do you nag me so about being out to the barn?”

“That ain’t the same thing at all, Henry, and you know it.”

“It sure looks like the same thing to me. It’s me not peeking in on you every five minutes that gets you riled up so much, not where I am.”

“That’s another thing,” Martha said. “What in the world do you do out in that barn, every blessed Sunday? It appears to me you spend more time out there on Sundays than you do all week put together.”

Henry stared at her, wondering whether he should tell her about the maniac being loose, just to change the subject. No — it would only set Martha off on a lot of damnfool questions, and he didn’t feel like talking to her any more than he had to. He didn’t even want to look at her.

He turned, left the house again and climbed back up in the hayloft. The visit by the constable and the deputy sheriff had almost made him forget about Colleet Kimberly, out there on the knoll beyond the orchard, but now he had an urgent need to look at her again. It would be painful, but it was something he had to do. He hoped she’d still be there — that sun was getting plumb brutal, especially if you were one of these real fair-skinned people, like Colleen.

She was still there, Henry found. She had shifted around on her canvas chair, so that she was facing the barn, and the unconscious display of bare legs was more provocative than anything Henry could remember.

“Oh, hell!” he said to himself in the stifling heat of the hayloft. “What makes me torment myself so?”

He lowered the spyglass a moment, to wipe the sweat from his face — and it was then that he saw the man in the orchard. The man was travelling at a fast lope, and, in his right hand, he carried a large meat-deaver.

Henry stared at the cleaver, and then at the man’s huge, undershot jaw. “It’s that crazy shovel-face maniac,” he said aloud. “It’s him, sure’r’n all hell! He’s running through the orchard that way, so’s he can cut around the house and come in the front door.”

Henry came down the ladder fast, smiling broadly. There was no fear in him, no hesitancy. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and the thought pleased him. You talk about your walm welcomes, he thought. I’ll give you one, Mister. I’ll give you one you ain’t never going to forget. ’Course you won’t have long to remember it, but you sure’n hell ai’nt going to forget it.

He ran to the shelf where he kept his shotgun, jerked the gun from its leather case, and crept to the barn door.

The man with the cleaver was at the far end of the orchard now, crouching down, watching the house from behind an apple tree. Even from this distance, and without the spyglass, Henry could see the crazed look in the big man’s eyes.

He’s a mean one, all right, he reflected. He should of been hung to begin with, like the constable said. Just look at him standing out there, thinking about how he’s going to chop somebody up with that cleaver...

The thought echoed and reechoed in Henry’s mind. Suddenly, he began to sweat even worse than he had in the hayloft. He put the thought into words. “Chop somebody up...” he whispered to himself.

Well, why not?

Martha was there in the house, wasn’t she? And helpless in her wheel chair, wasn’t she? The maniac would kill her with that cleaver — that was sure. And all Martha could do was scream.

Suppose he waited till she screamed, Henry reasoned, and then ran into the house with his shotgun? He’d be too late to save her, wouldn’t he? She’d be dead, and he could blow the maniac’s head off. Then he would have the farm all to himself.

The farm — and Colleen Kimberly.

He could have the girl too. Her pa would be glad to get her off his hands, if he could marry her to a widower with all the land Henry was going to have.

It was all so clear, so easy, so sure. Nobody would think a thing about it. He could hear them now — “Old Henry is out in his barn, see, and he hears Martha scream out, and he grabs up his shotgun and comes running, but he’s too late — that maniac has already killed her.”

Henry knelt in the shadow, just inside the barn door, and waited for the lunatic to make his dash for the house. The man moved cautiously around the apple tree, then suddenly broke into a run. But not toward the house — he was racing off in the opposite direction, toward the elm grove just this side of the blacktop.

Henry sprang out of the barn and sprinted after him. No, you don’t! he thought. Oh, no you don’t! You can’t cut out on me now, Mister. I can outrun you any day in the week.

He caught up with the man, in the elm grove. The lunatic slipped and fell, and scrabbled to his feet again — but he was too late. Henry shoved the barrels of his shot-gun into the crazed face and pulled one of the triggers.

The sight of the man’s face and head sickened Henry, but only for a moment. Almost before the man’s body struck the ground, Henry had whipped out of his shirt and wrapped it around the man’s head. Even so, he couldn’t prevent considerable blood from spilling on the ground. He swore. If the constable or that deputy sheriff should come nosing around out here, a little blood could be just as dangerous as a lot.

He worked rapidly and coolly, knowing the shotgun blast might bring a curious neighbour to investigate. He scooped dried grass and leaves over the place where the blood had spilled. Then he pushed the handle of the meat-cleaver into his belt, hoisted the dead man to his shoulder and picked up the shotgun. And, though he staggered a little under the man’s weight, he was able to move toward the house at something close to a run...

Martha’s eyes rounded, and her face blanched, and her hands clawed at the arms of her wheel chair. “Henry!” she gasped. “Henry, what—”

It was the last thing she ever said. Henry used the cleaver with all the practised skill of a hundred butcherings. Then he pointed the shotgun at the wall and fired the second barrel.

He didn’t look at Martha, as he ripped the blood-soaked shirt from the dead man’s head and ran to the bedroom. Hell, he thought, killing people was easy as hell, once you set your mind to it. He stuffed the bloody shirt into the bottom compartment of his fishing tackle box and pushed the box to the rear of the shelf in the closet. Then he took a clean shirt from the bureau and buttoned it up the front on his way back to the crank phone in the parlour.

This time he did look at Martha, and he smiled a little as he asked the operator in town to ring the constable for him. He was thinking about the way the sun had shimmered on Colleen Kimberly’s thighs. It was going to be hard to keep the happiness out of his voice when he talked to the constable, hard to sound the way the constable would expect him to sound.

“Constable Weber left word he’d be at the Shanley place a while,” the operator told him. “I’ll try to ring him there for you.”

“He got her Jim!” Henry yelled, when the constable’s voice finally came on the wire. “That maniac! He’s done killed Martha with a cleaver!... Yeah, I got him, but it was too late. I seen him out in the elm grove, up by the road, and I snuck up there and fired a barrel to scare him into surrendering, but he took off like a damn rabbit...

“No, I didn’t have the craw to kill him right then. I should have, but I just couldn’t do it. He got away from me. I come back to the house — and there’s poor Martha laying there, all chopped to hell and gone, and this crazy swine coming at me with his cleaver. I just barely had time to get my gun up and pull the trigger...

“Yeah, that’s right. He circled around me out there, somehow, and come back to the house.”

Henry let his voice break. He sobbed for a moment, then went on raggedly, “If’n I’d been another minute sooner, I could have saved her. It was all my own fault, Jim...

“Yes, it was too...

“Yeah, I’ll stay right here.” He hung up, shook a cigarette from his pack and strolled between the bodies toward the door.

It was so easy, he thought — so damned easy. He walked out on the porch and leaned back against a post, to wait for the constable. It wouldn’t be much of a wait, he knew — the Shanley place was less than half a dozen miles away.

He had just started to strike a match to his cigarette, when a flash of colour in the elm grove caught his eye. He froze, staring at Colleen Kimberly, while the flame crawled up the match and burned his fingers.

How long had she been there? What might she have seen? He dropped the match, flicked the cigarette away and strode toward her. For a moment, he thought she meant to turn and run away, but then she stood still and leaned back against a tree-trunk, to wait for him.

He stepped close and nodded to her. “What are you doing up here in the grove, Miss Colleen?” he asked.

She smoothed the blonde hair back from her forehead and smiled up at him shyly. “I heard the gun,” she said.

“You just get here?” he asked.

She bobbed her head and pressed her back a little closer to the tree-trunk. “I thought maybe you’d had an accident,” she said softly. “Like my Uncle Carl had that time he shot himself in the foot.”

Henry drew a deep breath. “You was worried about me? Is that what you mean, Colleen?”

She looked away from him and moistened her lips. “Yes. And I kept wondering why you never came back to the knoll. I waited and waited.”

Colleen was really a very small girl, Henry noticed, now that they stood face to face like this. Small and perfect and all woman — and almost his. It seemed the wrong time to be telling her about Martha, but it had to be done.

“Something pretty awful has happened here, Colleen,” he said. “Did you hear about the maniac that got loose from the asylum?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been out on the knoll all afternoon, and everybody else is visiting in town.”

“He was here,” Henry said. He paused. “He was here — and he killed Martha.”

Colleen sucked in her breath sharply. “He killed her?”

“Yeah,” Henry said. “With a meat-cleaver.”

She was staring at him. “He killed your wife?”

Henry nodded, and, for some reason, the look on the girl’s face made him feel a little uneasy.

“With a meat-cleaver?” she asked. “Some man killed your wife with a meat-cleaver?”

Henry bit at his lip. For the first time since he’d talked to Colleen on the knoll that day, he was beginning to understand what folks meant when they said she wasn’t quite bright. She was so pretty to look at that a man didn’t notice anything else at first.

But there was something wrong with her, he realised now. Her voice was clear and sure, but it was like a little girl’s — like a little girl reading words from a book she didn’t understand, saying the words properly without knowing what they meant.

There was something about Colleen’s eyes, too. They never showed any expression at all — at least none to speak of. Like right now. Colleen didn’t look one way or another. She just stared at you, or smiled at you, and all you saw were those beautiful blue eyes with their long, sooty lashes, and all you could think about was how pretty they were. You thought so hard about the eyes themselves, you never even noticed that they never had any thoughts in them, that they never said anything.

Colleen smiled at him and gestured toward the house. “In there?” she said. “He killed her in there?”

Henry didn’t say anything. A moment ago he had been sweating. Now he felt cold.

Colleen shook her head wonderingly, then glanced toward the blacktop. “Somebody’s coming,” she said. “I’d better get back before they see me. Pa wouldn’t like it a bit, me being over here this way.”

The deputy sheriff’s pickup truck was already turning off the blacktop. The cage with the two bloodhounds in it rattled and slid toward the tailgate.

“No use going now,” Henry said. “It’s too late.” He moved away from her and waited for the constable and the deputy to climb out of the truck. He couldn’t afford to think any more about Colleen now, he knew. He’d have to watch every word he said, be on guard for every question.

The constable came up to him, his face compassionate. “Henry!” he said. “Goodness, man, what a terrible thing! What a terrible, terrible thing to happen!”

Henry nodded, pretended to struggle for words a moment, then looked away.

“Leave him be, Jim,” the deputy said. “He won’t be feeling like doing any more talking than he has to.”

“Sure, Henry,” the constable said. “You just take it easy now. Me and the sheriff’ll just take a look inside.” He glanced at Colleen and frowned. “Your pa know you’re over here, girl?”

She shook her head and smiled at Henry, and Henry got that cold feeling again. “Pa isn’t home,” she said. “Henry, do you remember what you told me that day over on the knoll? About going to a movie in town?”

Henry stared down at the ground, trying to keep back the panic. “Maybe you’d best go home now, Colleen,” he said. “Your pa may be home.”

“I never been to a movie,” she said quietly. “Never once in my whole life. Pa would never let me.” She was studying Henry’s face, and beginning to frown at what she saw there. “You promised me, Henry,” she said. “You said that if something happened to your wife, you and I could go to the church suppers and the movies. Don’t you remember, Henry?” She stopped, and now the blue eyes held a sheen close to tears.

The constable glanced sharply at the deputy; then both men looked at Henry, with eyes grown suddenly narrow. No one said anything. The seconds pounded away for a small eternity, and then, abruptly, Henry realised that the only sound in the elm grove was his own rapid breathing.

At last, Constable Weber cleared his throat. “You look just a little sick, Henry,” he said. “Maybe you’d best go inside and stretch out a while.”

Henry walked the mile it took to pass the constable, and the second mile it took to pass the deputy, and walked into the house on legs that threatened to collapse beneath him at every step.

They suspect me, he thought. They suspect me — and pretty soon they’ll know for sure. They ain’t fools — now that they’ve got their suspicions they’ll keep at it till they know.

He picked up his shotgun, reloaded it from the box of shells in the kitchen and carried it with him into the bedroom. He was still cold. He took off his shoes and socks and lay down on the bed and pulled the sheet up over him, keeping the gun beside him, pressed close to his body.

He listened to the sounds of the constable and the deputy, as they came into the house and moved about in the parlour. He listened to them leave again. He listened to the grating sound of the blood-hound’s cage being opened, then to the deep voices of the dogs themselves. He heard them, up in the grove for a long time, making the sounds bloodhounds always did, when they were trying to pick out a scent. Then he heard the grate of the cage again, and the sharp click, as someone secured the hasp on the cage-door.

Then, for a long time, there was no sound at all, until he heard the clump of boots across the floor in the parlour, and along the hall to the bedroom. He lay very still, hardly breathing at all, the shot-gun still held tight against his side.

The constable and the deputy came in and shut the door, and stood staring at him. Outside, one of the bloodhounds bayed sadly, then was still.

“Henry,” the constable said, not meeting Henry’s eyes. “Henry, we know what you done.” He took a heavy breath and let it out slowly. “It was the girl that got us started,” he said. “The girl, and what you said about loading your shotgun with birdshot in one barrel and buckshot in the other, just like I told you I’d loaded mine.”

“That man was killed with buckshot,” the deputy said. “But you said you killed him out there in the parlour. That lead in the wall out there isn’t buckshot, Mr. Ferris — it’s birdshot. The buckshot was fired out there in the elm grove. We picked some of it out of a tree trunk.” He paused.

“And we found that blood out there, too. Those leaves should have been scattered around even, not all bunched up like that in one place.” He waited, watching Henry’s face expectantly.

Henry tightened his grip on the shotgun and said nothing.

The deputy shrugged. “We know just how you did it, Mr. Ferris,” he went on. “We even took the dogs up there to the grove. They knew the scent they was after all right, but they couldn’t come near the house, because the man never did. Once we knew you’d done him in, up there in the trees, and carried him down here to the house, we knew all we had to know.”

The constable’s face was grey. He shook his head slowly. “Henry,” he said softly, “I’ve known you all my life. I’m just thankful I don’t have to take you in.”

The deputy took a short step forward. “It’s my territory out here, Mr. Ferris,” he said. “I’ll ask you not to give me any trouble.”

Henry looked at the deputy, but his vision went through him and beyond him, and he smiled at the play of sunlight on Colleen Kimberley’s curving thighs, as she sat there on the knoll beyond the orchard.

He was still thinking of her, when he put the shotgun barrels in his mouth and pressed both triggers with his toe.

Blood on His Boots

by Tedd Thomey

When Hranek got out of San Quentin, his soul held but one purpose — to get even with the man who had ruined his life, although this man was his brother!

* * * *

He had not looked at himself in a mirror for a long, long time. But now Hranek walked slowly, deliberately, over to the silver-streaked mirror on the hotel room wall and stood in the spotlight of sun which came in the window.

He saw a face that was broken and misshapen, scarred and evil. He gazed at it hard and long — gazed at the old scar which, like a heavy weight, dragged down the left corner of his mouth, gazed at the flat, twisted nostrils, gazed at the deep crescent-shaped heel-gouges in his cheeks and chin.

Hranek felt the hatred for his brother rise fresh and new, stronger than ever. It was almost as if he could feel the pain again, feel his brother’s heels come down again and again.

Hranek let the hatred rise until he could taste it, acid and hot, full in his mouth. And though he wanted to pivot away from the mirror, he forced himself to stay, because, the longer he looked at himself, the easier it was to plan exactly what he would do during the next hour.

He did not recognise the expression in his eyes. Once they had been friendly eyes, full of good things like laughter and kindness and cheerfulness. Now they were deadly eyes, cold-blue and heartless. He filled his lungs with air, watched his big chest swell against the rough tweed of the suit they had given him at San Quentin. Then he let his breath out slowly, angrily, and turned finally away from the mirror.

Across the room, on the bed, lay a flat oblong parcel. Hranek’s large fingers were steady as he broke the string and unwrapped the brown paper. From the box he took a revolver. He turned it over in his hands, examining its blunt newness, rubbing a bit of lint from its oil-gleaming barrel.

Abruptly, he aimed it at the bureau and pulled the trigger three times, four times, hearing the crisp metallic sound of the hammer falling on empty chambers. For an instant, it was not the bureau he was aiming at. It was the ugly, fat figure of his brother, and he felt the hatred again, the hatred which had built up, layer upon layer, for four long years. He wanted to get it over with.

From the pocket of his coat, he drew six clean .38-caliber cartridges, which he slipped into the chambers. Opening his coat, he placed the revolver in the right rear pocket of his trousers, letting the butt protrude, so it would be within easy reach. He left the coat unbuttoned, so the bulging pocket would be less noticeable, then he walked toward the door.

Just before his fingers touched the knob, there was a rap on the door, short and nervous. Hranek halted.

“Sam?” called a woman’s voice. “Are you in there?”

It was Nina’s voice, gentle despite its urgency, and he felt a stab of panic, because he did not want to see her. He stood still, praying his silence would send her away.

She rapped again. “Sam?”

Then she turned the knob, and, before he thought to thrust his shoulder against the door, she came in.

“Sam,” she said, “I thought you were here. Why didn’t you...?”

She saw him then, got a good look at his face, but she controlled herself beautifully. Her large clear eyes widened, only for an instant, and then she went on talking, looking at him as if nothing had changed.

“It’s been a long four years,” she said. “Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

“Beat it!” Hranek said. He gave the words a convict’s toughness.

“Please, Sam.” She stepped closer, shutting the door behind her. “You’ve got it wrong. If you had just read my letters, you’d see that I didn’t have anything to do with it. I tried to—”

“Look at my face,” he said. “Handsome, isn’t it? And you’re as responsible for it as Julius is. It was your phone call that took me downstairs that morning, downstairs where Julius and his buddies were waiting to beat the living hell out of me.”

“No,” she said. “Julius told me to make the phone call. He didn’t tell me why. I never—”

“Shut up!” Hranek said. “Shut up and look at my face. Give it a good look, this time, and make yourself sick!”

She looked at him, unflinching, and he stood there, feeling big and powerless, wanting to hate her the way he hated Julius, but unable to do so. She was prettier, even, than she had been four years ago. She was twenty-eight now and more mature, but her figure was still small and perfect in her smartly-cut navy blue suit.

“Forget about your face, Sam.” she said. “It’s not so bad. A doctor, a plastic surgeon, could do wonders for you.”

He shook his head. “It’s easy for you to talk. You don’t have to live with it, you don’t feel the ridges and the dents every time you run your hand over it.”

“If it were so horrible,” she said, stepping closer to him, “would I—”

It happened very quickly. Her small hands reached up, she drew his face down and kissed him, and her lips stung him with their sweetness. Instinctively, he pulled her close, feeling the longing of four years, feeling the small softness of her. But he remembered she was his brother’s wife, and he felt the hatred again. He turned away from her, feeling his blood race.

After a moment he spoke. “Where’s Julius?” he demanded.

She did not reply.

“Where is he?” His voice rose sharply.

“At his office, over the Spin-A-Line game. But you won’t be able to get in.”

“Why not?”

“His men are with him. He knew you got out of San Quentin yesterday, and he’s taking no chances.”

“I’ll get in,” Hranek said. He walked back to her and placed his large hand hard on her shoulder. “Won’t I, Nina?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s the best way to get in, Nina?” He increased the pressure of his fingers. “Will the boys be guarding the stairs?”

She tried to free herself, but he held her tighter.

“There are no stairs,” she said. “Julius had them taken out. There’s only the elevator, and the men will be guarding it.”

“But Julius is smart,” said Hranek. “He’s got another way in, or I don’t know Julius. Am I right?”

“You’re hurting me, Sam.”

He did not slacken the pressure. “Where it is?”

Twisting, she tried to escape, and he didn’t want to hurt her that much, but his hatred for Julius was stronger. He felt her flesh squeezing under his fingers.

“On the mezzanine!” She put her hand over his and tried to push it from her shoulder. “In the photo booth. Julius has a door there that leads to the elevator. Please. Sam!”

He released her, and she stepped back, sitting down on the bed and rubbing her shoulder.

She looked up at him. “What are you going to do?”

“None of your business. Just keep out of my way, that’s all I ask.”

She started to get up from the bed and her fingers brushed the flat open box. By the quick intake of her breath as she picked up the box, he could tell she had seen the imprint where the revolver had lain against the cardboard.

“Sam!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “What was in this box?”

Turning from her, he moved toward the door. She ran after him, catching his arm and trying to stop him.

“No, Sam!” she said. “No!”

He pushed her away, but she grasped his arm again. Her eyes, staring up at him, were round and tremendous, and there was terror in her voice.

“Listen to me, Sam! You’ll never get in! If you do, they’ll kill you!”

Her fingers dug into the tweed of his coat like small hooks, and he had to bend her wrist to dislodge her.

“Listen to me!” she cried. “Racine talked to the shipyard — your old job’s there waiting for you. That’s what I came here to tell you. You can be a shipwright again. So don’t be a fool, Sam! Don’t be a fool!”

Her words were sharp, but they could not pierce the shield of four years of waiting, four years of hating.

“I’ll get in,” he said, “and I won’t kill him right away.” He looked down at his heavy prison shoes.

He stepped quickly into the hotel hallway, slamming the door behind him to muffle the sounds of her crying. He walked down the carpeted steps and through the drab lobby, out to the sidewalk. Several cars were parked at the curb. Not until he passed it, did he realise one was an official city car. The driver’s door opened, and, from the edge of his eyes, he saw Racine, the District Attorney’s assistant, get out.

He speeded his steps, trying to lose himself in the afternoon shopping crowds, but Racine would not be shaken off.

“All right,” said Racine, catching up with him, “Let’s not make a gallop out of it. I want to talk to you, Hranek.”

“Get away from me,” Hranek said.

“Go on — act tough,” said Racine. “Act like a big ex-con.”

“You don’t scare me.” Hranek turned a corner, saw a cruising red-and-white cab and hailed it. “You’ve got nothing on me.”

“I can have you in a cell in five minutes on a weapons charge,” Racine said. “There’s a bulge in your hip pocket as big as a street-car. Now, do you slow down and talk, or do I call my assistant?”

Hranek stopped walking. As he faced Racine and looked into the hard, shrewd eyes, he felt a new burst of anger and frustration, and his hands became fists, hanging at his sides. He shook his head at the cab driver, and the cab pulled away from the curb.

“That’s more like it,” said Racine. “Did Nina tell you about the job at the shipyard?”

“You know where you can put that job,” Hranek said. “I’m not forgetting you’re the one who sent me up.”

“The jury went by the evidence,” said Racine. “All they had was your word that Julius framed you. You could have gotten worse than manslaughter.”

“Evidence!” Hranek said. “Phony evidence! Julius shot Shafton because Shafton was Number One. And Julius had to get me out of the way, because I wouldn’t play ball. So he got rid of two at once, setting it up so it looked like I shot Shafton. He testified he had to stomp me to get the gun away, but that was a lie. He stomped me, figuring I’d be so punchy afterward I’d never be able to testify. It was a fix, Racine, and you know it.”

“All right, it was a fix,” said Racine. “Forget it, and listen to me. You’ve heard Julius is Number One now? You’ve heard how he’s enlarged the Spin-A-Line operation?”

Hranek nodded.

“He’s paying off six of the councilmen,” said Racine. “That’s how he keeps the game open. We know he has records somewhere of those payments, because he uses those records to keep the councilmen in line. But we’ve never been able to get into his office to look for them. And that’s where you come in, Hranek.”

“I won’t do it,” said Hranek.

“Don’t be stubborn, Hranek. You don’t even know what I want you to do. Get those records for us, and we’ll wipe the slate clean — we’ll restore your citizenship and get you a pardon from the Governor.”

Hranek laughed a short bitter laugh. “Wipe the slate clean? Racine, who do you think you’re kidding? Wipe out four years of sitting in a stinking cell for something you didn’t do, four years of being an animal with a torn face, four years of walls that made me want to blow my top? No paper will wipe out those years, Racine! Now get out of my way!”

He shouldered Racine aside, feeling the hatred rise big again, not wanting to delay any longer, wanting to get to Julius and get it over with.

He dodged past people to the kerb, where another cab was pulling up.

“Wait!” called Racine.

Hranek opened the cab door, got in and told the driver to hurry. When they were out in the stream of traffic, he looked back and saw Racine standing angrily at the Kerb. He told the driver to take him to the amusement pier.

At the gaudy entrance to the pier, Hranek paid off the driver and walked rapidly along the plank sidewalk which led over the surf toward the great wooden hills and valleys of the roller coaster. He did not look around him at the break-the-balloon concessions, or the knife-throwing booths, or the popcorn-and-taffy booths.

When he drew near the broad red gates that led to the coaster box-office, he glanced up briefly at the weatherworn sign, Hranek’s Cyclone Racer, remembering the proud day his father had nailed it there. Then he crossed to the penny arcade.

From a position just outside the arcade, he could look through plate glass windows into the huge adjoining Spin-A-Line building. The Spin-A-Line lobby was thronged with people going in to gamble their quarters on the steel balls which tumbled into numbered slots. It took him nearly a minute of careful observation to find the guard.

He was a small, faded, blond man in a sports jacket, and he wasn’t stationed near the doors of the self-service elevator, because that would have been too obvious. Instead, he was leaning against a wall at approximately the middle of the lobby, In a position to intercept anyone moving toward the elevator.

Hranek entered the arcade and walked past rows of pinball machines and penny pitching stands, to the stairs at the rear. He wondered if there was a mezzanine entrance to the elevator as Nina had said. He wondered if Nina wasn’t setting him up for another trap.

The mezzanine was not crowded. He walked slowly among the amusement devices, stopping to play a baseball machine, working his way toward the Take it Yourself for 25 Cents photo booth against the rear wall. As far as he could tell, there was no one on the mezzanine who even faintly resembled one of Julius’ guards. But it did not pay to take chances.

He returned to the baseball machine and played another game. He felt calm, calmer than he had been all day. As the small metal figures behind the glass pitched batted and fielded the ball, he remembered the years long before, when he and Julius and the other kids of the concession-owners had played baseball on the beach beside the roller coaster. Julius had been too fat even then to play well, but he had been good-natured and fun to have around.

How quickly all that had changed, when they were still young men and the Old Man died. After he came from Poland to America, the Old Man had worked twenty years to build the coaster, and it had been his one wish that his sons would run it after he was gone. But Julius, the older, had taken control from the start, squeezed his brother out and sold the coaster for a song to open his first Spin-A-Line game.

Hranek ran his fingers over his face, rubbing the thickened tissue at the corner of his mouth, and he felt the hatred rise again. He slammed the last ball into the foul zone, looked over the floor, saw it was deserted and walked straight to the photo booth.

Inside, he drew the canvas curtain shut and studied the booth wall where it was flush against the wall of the Spin-A-Line building. It took him half a minute to find the shallow finger-slot on the narrow sliding door. Then he removed the revolver from his trouser pocket and placed it in his coat pocket, where it would be more accessible.

The door slid back easily, revealing an opening in the wall nearly as high as a man was tall. Beside it was an ordinary elevator panel with a single button. He did not hesitate. He pressed the button, saw the steel cables move and heard an electric motor whir.

In a moment, the elevator stopped beside the opening in the wall. He unlatched the narrow elevator door, passed through it in a crouch and, from inside the elevator, closed the door behind him.

He pushed the No. 4, top floor button and placed his hand on the revolver in his coat pocket. The steel was hard and cold.

At the top floor the elevator came silently to a halt. Hranek stepped out into a hallway. It was panelled handsomely in oak, and the wall-to-wall rug was thick and spongy under his shoes as he walked along to the broad door on which, in conservatively small letters, were the words Julius L. Hranek, President.

Drawing the revolver from his pocket, he turned the heavy brass knob and then, with his shoe, nudged the door open.

The first things he saw were Julius’ feet up on the glass top of the desk, wearing the highly polished black cowboy boots he affected, to give himself extra height, boots with high sharp heels that could leave ridges and dents in a man’s face.

Julius’ great sloth-like body was supported by a swivel chair. His pink plump hand, holding a thin cigar, paused in mid air as he saw his brother.

Hranek glanced once around the office and saw the small gunman reclining on the leather couch behind Julius.

“Don’t move!” Hranek said. “Either of you.”

There was no expression in Julius’ pale blue eyes. “Now, Sam,” he said gently, “don’t be — hasty.”

“I told you it would come to this,” Hranek said through his teeth. “I told you the day I quit you to work in the shipyard. And I’m—”

The hand of the gunman moved fast, astonishingly fast, firing from beneath his coat. Death sang past Hranek’s shoulder and passed through the wall.

Hranek fired two bullets almost simultaneously, the new trigger of the revolver working stiffly, and saw them strike home in the gunman’s chest.

An expression of intense surprise came over the gunman’s face. Staring at Hranek’s revolver as if he didn’t understand why it had damaged him that way, he raised himself up on his elbows. Then his arms collapsed, and he fell forward, sliding off the leather couch to the floor, where he lay without moving.

Julius swivelled slowly around in his chair and looked at the fallen man. When he turned back to Hranek, the fat man’s forehead and round cheeks glistened with pinpoints of sudden perspiration.

“My gosh!” Julius murmured, unbelieving.

“Start praying,” Hranek said, “because where you’re going, you’ll need all the help you can get. You’re going to...”

Hranek heard something in the hall, the metallic click of the elevator doors closing. Still in the doorway, he pivoted and glanced down the hall in time to see the approach of the other gunman, the faded blond one who had been stationed downstairs. The blond man threw himself on the floor like an advancing soldier, and they fired together.

Hranek’s first bullet was high and instantly a long straight streak appeared in the green rug beyond the blond man. Hranek’s second bullet caught the man in the forehead, an inch below his blond widow’s peak. The man’s head tipped forward as if he were nodding, then he turned his cheek, cradling it against the rug, and became silent.

Hranek stepped back into the office. He strode around the desk, kicked the swivel chair, and it rolled away from the desk on its small wheels, carying Julius with it.

“Please, Sam!” Julius cried. “I’ll give you money, lots of money!”

“You’ll give me nothing!” Hranek said. Then he paused, remembering what Racine had asked for. “Except one thing. Where is it, Julius — the record you keep of your payments to the councilmen?”

“Of course, of course!” Julius got up from the chair and stood there, his fat body rocking on the high heels of the polished boots. “We’ll be partners again, Sam, won’t we — like we were before?”

“You’re all through.” Hranek said. “Where is it?”

“Sure, Sam.” Julius reached inside his coat and brought out a yellow leather wallet. From it his trembling fingers extracted a small address book, which he handed to Hranek.

“There it is, Sam. It’s all in there, everything!”

Hranek fanned through the pages, saw the councilmen’s names, the dates and the amounts paid.

“All right,” he said. “Now look at me, Julius.”

Their eyes locked and Hranek, seeing the smooth, unmarred skin on his brother’s fat face, felt the hatred bigger than ever, strong and overpowering.

“Look at it,” he said. “Look at this mess I carry for a face and remember how you did it, how you stood over me and smashed me with your boots!”

Julius backed away, his eyes fixed on Hranek, his great mass of chins quivering.

“I’m going to smash your face.” Hranek said.

“When your face is numb — then I’m going to kill you!”

“No!” Julius said.

Hranek hit him hard on the cheek with the revolver, and Julius went down. Julius lay on his back, stiff with fear, a red stream emerging from the wound on his cheek.

Hranek leaned over him, raising the revolver to strike again.

He looked at the blood, and, abruptly, he remembered again the baseball games they had played on the beach, back in those years when everything had been all right between them. He remembered the day he had been struck by the ball, struck on the cheek. Julius had wiped the blood away and then run for their father.

He remembered other times — the morning he had managed to grab Julius’ swim trunks and drag him to safety in the surf by the pier — and the day they had fought back to back against the attacking West Side kids.

He couldn’t do it.

He raised the revolver and tried to strike again, but he could not force himself to do it. Gone was the hatred, replaced by a sickness deep inside, which protested the evil thing their lives had become when they grew up.

Hranek lowered the revolver and turned away from Julius. Weak, nauseated with himself, he sat down heavily in the swivel chair and looked at the floor.

He heard the elevator doors slam, heard someone running down the hall, but he did not look up until Nina came into the office.

“Sam!” She ran to his side.

“Couldn’t do it.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t do it!”

He watched Julius get slowly to his feet but he didn’t realise what was happening until Julius snatched the incriminating address book from his fingers and went out the door. Despite his weight and the awkward western heels, Julius moved very fast down the hall.

Hranek pushed Nina aside and went after him. He was only two steps behind when Julius got to the elevator doors and slammed them open.

The elevator wasn’t there.

Julius could not halt the momentum of his huge body in time. He tried to grasp the doors as he fell.

There were two screams — Julius’ and Nina’s.

Hranek dived, sliding on the floor toward the opening, and his fingers caught the gabardine of Julius’ trousers. The cloth burned his fingertips as it ripped. He made a last grab and his fingers clamped on Julius’ foot.

Hranek held on, with all the strength that was in him. The shock, as Julius cartwheeled and hung head downward, almost tore his arm from its joint. His arm had never known such pressure. Julius’ two hundred and forty pounds thrashed and flailed, pulling Hranek into the opening until his shoulder wedged against the door jamb. He tried to tighten the grip of his fingers, but he could not, and he felt the leather slipping.

He tried for just an ounce more of grip but Julius’ foot slipped from the boot, and he screamed all the way down, four stories down, the scream reverberating in the elevator shaft. The shaft vibrated with the final, crashing impact, and the scream was cut off as if a swift door had closed below.

Slowly Hranek withdrew his arm. He looked at the black polished boot, which was still in his hand, and then he looked at Nina, who knelt beside him, her eyes wide and round.

He did not speak for a long moment. “It was the boot,” he said finally. “He_ slipped.”

“I know,” said Nina softly. She paused. “Racine was following me here. He must’ve pressed the button for the elevator.” She paused again. “I’m glad it happened, in a way.”

“But he was your husband.”

She shook her head. “I divorced him after what he did to you. He knew I loved you — that’s why he stomped you. If you had only read my letters...” She bent forward, and her lips brushed his forehead. “I waited for you, Sam.”

“But my face,” he said. “You can’t—”

“Yes, I can,” she said. “Your face will be no problem for the right doctor, don’t you realise that, Sam?”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

He looked down at the boot, with its sharp heel.

A Long Time Dying

by Will Cotton

Johnny wasn’t afraid of death, because he knew he was already dead. What troubled him most was that he had been given a chance to live and muffed it.

* * * *

Johnny Martin pulled the door of his room shut and went over to the mirror. He stood there awhile, his forehead wrinkled, studying the outlines of his face. It was an old mirror, and the glass was flawed, so that it distorted his features. It made his skin look sallow. But he could get the idea all right.

He smiled, and then he remembered what he had called his old man down at the filling station, and what his old man had said. He guessed his old man was right. He was no damn good. But it didn’t show in the face looking back at him from the lousy mirror.

He examined each feature carefully — the clear brown eyes under straight black lashes — the square jaw with the hint of a cleft — the firm lines of his cheekbones — the full, serious mouth. Well, maybe there was something not quite right 86 about the mouth. But nobody would notice it. There were a lot worse-looking guys out in Hollywood, who got paid big money because of the way women went for them. To hell with his old man! He’d get along.

He pushed back a lock of black hair that had fallen out of place, then went over to the wooden chest of drawers and rummaged around, until he found his lastex bathing trunks. He stripped of the greasy pants and shirt he wore for work at the filling station and tossed them on the bed. He noticed again how badly the paint had chipped from the bed frame. His old man said he ought to paint it. But he wasn’t going to be around long enough to make it worth while.

The small room was hot and smelled of cabbage from the boiled dinner his mother was cooking. Johnny glanced out the window, across the alley, at the baked brick walls of the tenements, noting the drawn curtain in Liz Nolan’s window. Then he wiped a hand over his chest, enjoying the smooth firmness of his flesh under the sweat.

No damn good inside, he thought again. And then, fiercely, What the hell did they expect? No one gave him a chance any other way. If he was going to get anywhere, it wouldn’t be by knocking himself out at the filling station. He’d have to go make out himself. In his own way — like Rusty.

You had to admire Rusty. He knew what he wanted, and he went out and got it. It didn’t matter how. Maybe, like Rusty said, Johnny had a streak of chicken in him.

Johnny Martin grimaced. He had his trunks on, now, and he straightened up, catching a glimpse of the muscles sliding smoothly under his brown skin in the mirror. He drew on a pair of faded levis and a T-shirt. He smoothed his hair again and caught up a towel.

As he went through the kitchen his mother called out to him from the stove.

He answered sharply. “Don’t expect me.” The smell of cabbage was stronger.

“You aren’t going back to the station?”

“You’re right, Ma. I’m not going to the station.”

“Your paw needs you. He isn’t so young any more, and it’s awful hot.”

He hesitated, irritation crowding in on him. “Pa can handle it. Anyway, he likes the smell of gas.”

He watched his mother pick up a chunk of meat on a long fork. Steam billowed from the pot.

“I don’t know what’s come over you, Johnny,” she said, her tone listless under a defeat she couldn’t cope with. “You didn’t used to be this way.”

“Stow it,” he told her. “Or else find something new to say.”

He turned away, hearing the lid clatter as his mother replaced it on the pot. He went out the back door quick, so she wouldn’t have a chance to nag him any more.

He walked up Cambridge Street, feeling the sun beat up at him from the pavements, trying to figure out why the tightness in his guts didn’t go away. At Bowdoin Square, he went down into the subway, finding the damp coolness pleasant, after the heat of the sun. He lit a cigarette, dropped it and crushed it out under the toe of his shoe when the train came rattling in.

While the train rushed through the tunnel, he found he could think better. He would have to get away. Working for his old man at the gas station — his mother’s continual nagging — they were getting him too nerved up. He could team up with Rusty for a while. Rusty knew the angles — how to make dough fast and easy. It would mean being nicer to Liz, who hung around with Rusty and the gang. He didn’t care much for her. She was too damned easy.

The tightening of his eardrums told him they had left Atlantic Avenue and were passing under the harbour. He wished, for a moment, that the water above them would crack the tunnel walls and come swirling in around him. Then he wouldn’t have to decide these things — because there was risk tied in with teaming up with Rusty, and he was too old for reform school, now.

It hadn’t been too bad, those six months, but now, if anything went wrong, it would mean a real rap, at the Old Charles Street jail, maybe. But Rusty was careful — like last night. There was that Cadillac, and it looked like an easy set-up, but Rusty decided there might be trouble, so they had gone back to drinking beer.

Coming out of the tunnel after Maverick, the sun was bright and blinding. Johnny stopped trying to think. He didn’t want to look ahead — or to remember. The train flashed by the airport, the beaches, Orient Heights. He rubbed a hand over his eyes.

An old lady with a shopping bag, crammed with groceries, sat down beside him. She smelled of stale sweat and garlic, and he turned his head away, thinking that, when he had a car, he wouldn’t have to be riding in the subway, and there were lots better beaches than Reverse you could make if you were driving...

He had a quick swim, and then he went across the street to Jerry’s Hot Dog Stand to get a frank. He was standing on the sidewalk, just in front of the stand, finishing a coke, when the blue Packard convertible with the top down came lazily along the road. He regarded it enviously, admiring its sleek lines, the glitter of the chrome against smooth paint.

The convertible came abreast of the stand and seemed to hesitate. Johnny Martin saw the girl behind the wheel, then — the fluff of blonde hair, the red lips, the smooth tanned skin across high cheekbones. Class, he thought, real class! He felt sudden excitement inside him.

He stepped to the edge of the sidewalk. The girl had brought the convertible to a halt. Behind her, a string of cars began backing up. A horn blew irritably. She glanced at the stand, wistfully.

Johnny said, “If you want something, I’ll get it. You can go around the block and pick it up when you get back.”

“Oh... thanks,” she said. “I’m so thirsty. I’d love a coke!”

“Roger,” he said, liking the sound of her voice.

She smiled gratefully. The convertible began moving again. Johnny bought another coke and waited with it at the edge of the sidewalk, wondering if he’d ever see her again. After a few minutes, he spotted the blue convertible heading toward him in the string of traffic, and he felt his hand begin to tremble, so that he spilled a little of the coke over the rim of the paper cup. When the convertible came up to him, he opened the door and slid in on the tan leather seat.

“I didn’t expect that,” she said, watching the car ahead.

“I come with the coke,” he told her.

She laughed. It was a light, happy sound. “All for a dime?”

“Not even a dime,” he told her. “You get this one on credit.”

She drove him around the block. She didn’t say any more. He watched her, liking the intentness of her as she drove the big car through the traffic. He could hear the shouts of the bathers on the beach, the roar of the roller coaster in the distance.

When she got to the stand again, she slowed, “This is where you came in,” she said.

He reached for the handle of the door, feeling a sinking in his stomach. “A good feature, I like to see twice,” he told her.

She hesitated, but only for a moment. “All right,” she said. “But this is the last show.”

But it wasn’t. Suddenly a parked car pulled out in front of them. Johnny told her to drive into the vacant space, and she did. Cutting the motor, she swung around to face him. Her blue eyes studied him, in amused appraisal.

She must have liked what she found, Johnny thought, because she asked suddenly, “How’s the water?”

“Cool — but good.”

“I’d like to try it. But the beach is so crowded.”

“There’s a place up the road a ways — a little sandy cove. It belongs to a cottage, but the people don’t come until August. You’d like it.”

“Do you come with it?”

“I guess so. Don’t you like that?”

“It might not be a good idea. I don’t know anything about you.”

He ran a hand over his chin. “I could give you a reference,” he said, “but I’d want some from you too. After all, these days a fellow has to be careful who he goes out with.”

She tossed her head and laughed lightly. He liked the way the sun caught her yellow hair, making it shine.

“You win,” she said, “No references.”

He went across the street and came back with his levis and T-shirt rolled up in his towel. He wasn’t sure she would be waiting for him — but she was. He remembered the face he had looked at in the old mirror, and he guessed he knew why. His eye ran over the sleek lines of the convertible again — over the girl. He slipped in beside her, excitement making his blood hot.

“Take your next left,” he directed. “Incidentally, I’m Johnny.”

“Thanks for the formal introduction. I’m Lois.”

He leaned back against the leather, his eyes squinting into the sun, while the breeze rippled over his body. He thought, maybe he wasn’t going to need Rusty, at that. Maybe he could work something out for himself. This girl was class. And the wagon was worth plenty. He’d play it slow and close. When the time came, he’d know what to do...

Lois stood up suddenly and began to brush the sand from her long, slender legs. “It’s late, Johnny. I have to go.”

He looked up at her, noting the full curve of her breasts against the smooth gleam of her white bathing suit, the slimness of her waist, the lithe contours of her hips.

“It can’t even be six,” he said lazily.

“It’s after that.”

He had not touched her. He had wanted to, desperately — especially after they had come in from the water and had stretched out so close to each other on the sand. He got up slowly. She was putting on slacks over her suit.

“Lois, does it have to end now?”

Her eyes fastened on him. Wrinkles formed across her forehead. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I think it had better.”

“I don’t have much money. But we could go out sometime. I’d like to dance with you.”

She seemed suddenly serious.

“Most young writers don’t have much money — unless they’re lucky. But that doesn’t matter.”

He had almost forgotten telling her he was a writer. It had seemed like an occupation to intrigue her. Now he said, “What does matter, then?”

She turned away. She had picked up her blouse and was buttoning it. “I don’t trust you entirely. I don’t understand it exactly. But I’m afraid.”

“There’s no reason for that.”

It was odd she had said what she did. Johnny felt a small, cold finger working along his spine. “So let’s leave it this way — a pleasant afternoon on the beach.”

He went over to her. Took her shoulders and swung her around. She tilted her face up, her lips parted a little, and he bent down and crushed her to him. There was sudden fire in him, like nothing he had ever known, and he felt her body straining against his, her lips hot and eager. He thought, hating himself for it at that moment, that she would see him again. Then, abruptly, she broke away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d really better go. Can you get back wherever you have to go?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I shan’t.” It was cool, ladylike, brutal. “Good-bye, Johnny.”

He watched her walk rapidly away from him, to where the blue convertible was parked, leaving her towel still on the beach. He thought, she could at least have given him a lift back to Revere.

In sudden anger, he turned away, sprinting down the beach toward the sea. The water splashed up over him as he ran in, cold against his burning body. He swam out with long, fierce strokes, until fatigue sapped his anger. Then he came in, dried himself and put on his levis and T-shirt.

He noticed then, that in her haste to get away, Lois had left her wallet lying in the sand beside her towel. He opened it, ruffled quickly through the impressive number of bills, found her driving licence. He put it in his hip pocket, smiling thinly.

He could find Lois, now. He would find her and make her pay for leaving him here like this — for running away when he kissed her. He walked slowly through the sand to the road, to thumb a ride back to Revere where he could get the subway.

The juke box was blaring out a souped-up version of Temptation. Johnny Martin filled his glass from one of the opened bottles of beer on the table. His mouth tasted ratty from too many cigarettes and too much beer. He realised he was a little drunk. His head was fuzzy, and, when he touched his chin, it felt as if someone else was touching him.

He was sitting in a booth with Rusty and Joe Levis and, right across from him, Liz Nolan. They had been there a long time. He took out another cigarette, put it between his lips and scratched a match. Then he tried to move his leg, so Liz couldn’t find it with hers. But, after a moment, the pressure was back against his thigh, and he gave up.

The music stopped, leaving only the sound of the whirring fan, which was supposed to clear out some of the smoke, but didn’t seem to make much progress.

Rusty pushed back a mop of red hair and squinted at Johnny. “We took Liz out to the quarry this afternoon. She was as cool as could be.”

Joe laughed. “Scared some of the boys plenty,” he said. “She went in bare, like the rest of us.”

Rusty said, “She’s been pestering me to take her a long while.”

Liz looked angrily at Rusty. “You didn’t have to tell Johnny about it.”

Rusty picked up a bottle of beer and tilted it to his lips. When he had finished he said, grinning, “Johnny knows you’re a slut. We aren’t giving anything away.”

“She likes you because she thinks you’re refined,” Joe said to Johnny. “Are you refined?”

There was smug self-assurance in Rusty’s tone. Johnny felt the pressure against his leg increase. The beer was making his stomach queasy.

“You’re a punk, Rusty,” Liz said. “A pain you know where.”

“But you put up with the pain pretty good,” Rusty smirked. “As long as Papa pays — or can you make more yourself on the side?”

Johnny got up unsteadily. The movement overturned a bottle on the table. He picked it up while a trickle of beer ran on to the floor. He had to get out of here. But he should talk to Rusty first.

“Want to come with me a minute, Rusty?” he said thickly.

“Sure, chum. If you’ll promise to put Liz out of her misery.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He pushed clear of the booth and waited while Rusty got up. Joe was making some crack he didn’t hear, but Liz and Rusty laughed. Rusty followed him over to the men’s room.

“You going to be sick?” Rusty asked.

Johnny looked at him — the red hair, the squat, tough body, the narrow eyes. He didn’t like Rusty, any more than he liked Liz. But he needed him now. He shook his head.

“What can we get for a Packard convertible?” he asked.

“This years?”

“Yeah.”

“Plenty,” Rusty said, eyeing him sharply. “What’s your angle?”

“I got it figured.”

Rusty’s eyes narrowed. His lips were tight over his teeth. “You won’t make it,” he said. “You never do, when it comes to the point.”

“This time, I will, Rusty. I’ve got to.”

“You said that before — but you always go chicken. That’s why I didn’t try anything last night with the Caddy. You might have gone screaming for the cops.”

Johnny felt the blood flush the back of his neck. He reached out and caught Rusty’s silk shirt in his fist. He swayed a little, as he said hoarsely, “I’m telling you, Rusty. This time is different.”

“Okay,” Rusty said then. “Leave go of me. Well split, fifty-fifty. When the time comes, I’ll give you the pitch.”

“Sure.”

“If you don’t chicken out, I’ll cut you in on something big — bigger than you can imagine — something I’m working on now.”

“And lay off Liz. She likes to play around, and I kid about it, but she’s my woman.”

“I know that, Rusty. Thanks.”

Someone came in then, and they went back to the booth. Johnny had another beer, and then he went home.

He sensed something was wrong, when he climbed the stairs and saw the light leaking out from the door. But he was feeling muddle-headed again from the beer, and nothing made much sense — especially the light being on.

Taking out his key, he fiddled for a few moments with the lock before he could work it. When he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw his father rising from his chair, his bulk strangely menacing. He saw his mother, too, rubbing her eyes as if she had been suddenly awakened. Johnny stood there, steadying himself on the flat of both feet.

“Well,” he said thickly, “quite a reception!”

He heard his mother say, “He’s drunk, Paw. My Johnny’s drunk!” Her voice sounded as if all the cares of the world were on her shoulders. Johnny felt sorry for her. “A couple of beers...” he muttered.

He looked up, to find his father standing very close to him. A big man, his father — bigger than he would ever be. In the stillness that fell over the room, he could hear his father’s heavy breathing, and he was suddenly afraid. It was as if he had never known this man before.

“I guess I’ll hit the sack,” he said thickly.

“Just a minute.”

It was his father speaking — his father who reached out and grabbed his T-shirt, holding him there. “There was ten dollars missing from the till at the station when I tallied up,” his father said. “You took it, Johnny.”

Johnny felt as if he was going to be sick. The beer was making him that way. He wished his father would leave him alone. He said, out of the corner of his mouth, “So what? I needed the dough. It’s all in the family.”

His father seemed stunned. “How old are you, Johnny?”

“Don’t be dumb. You know how old I am.”

“Twenty — you’re old enough to act like a man. But you don’t. So I’ll treat you like a kid.”

He hadn’t let go of the T-shirt. Johnny felt the sickness in him getting worse. But it was mixed up with anger, now. He pulled back, tearing the shirt. Then, when his father came closer, he brought up his right fist and swung it at his father’s jaw. But his legs weren’t steady and he missed. Then he felt the side of his face explode, as his father’s open palm slapped him hard. He went over sideways, hearing his mother scream.

His father picked him up, and he felt himself go limp. He couldn’t seem to do anything. The room revolved around him crazily, and his throat was as dry as if it was stuffed with dust.

Then his father was beating him, and he had to bite his lips to keep from crying like a baby as the blows came, slamming pain through him. It went on a long time — it seemed like a long time. And then he was sick, and his mother was bending over him, crying and saying, “You shouldn’t have done it while he was sick.”

And his father, answering heavily, “He’s got to learn sometime. He’s no damn good, and, unless I can teach him, the cops are going to have to.”

His father went away, and he managed to get up and stumble to his room. But he knew he couldn’t stay here any longer. In a way, he didn’t blame his father. He had it coming, all right. But still, he couldn’t stay here now that his father had beaten him. He waited until the sounds died down, and then he crept out on stocking feet, his body stiff and sore, his head still giddy.

He started up the street where Rusty had a room. Maybe Rusty could look after him. But he didn’t like the idea of Rusty seeing him beat-up this way; Rusty would want to know what had happened. He couldn’t tell him it was his old man, and he didn’t think he could make up a story, either.

He sat down on the stone steps of an apartment, holding his head in his hands, trying to figure out what to do. A couple passed by, arms around each other, not noticing him. Then he heard the click of heels on the brick sidewalk, and he thought he’d better get moving before a cop found him. It was an effort to stand up. He had to steady himself against the side of the building to keep from falling. The footsteps grew closer.

Then they paused, and Liz Nolan said, “Johnny! What’s happened to you?”

He looked at her, but all he could see was a twisting shadow.

“Beat up,” he managed to say.

“I’ll get Rusty — I just left him. We’ll get you home.”

He ran a tongue over dry, cracked lips. “No — Don’t get Rusty. I can’t go home, either.”

“Come to my place, then.”

He tried to draw away. But she took his arm. He went meekly then, not knowing what else to do. She helped him up the stairs, into a room that smelled of some heavy, sweet perfume. The smell almost gagged him. He sat on the edge of the bed, while Liz went over and pulled down the window shade. Hammers were pounding inside his skull. He felt as though he might be sick again. She came over and kissed him, lips slack and moist.

He let himself fall back on the bed — away from her. “You better leave me alone, Liz,” he said. “I’m in bad shape.”

She looked down at him a moment, contemptuously. She said, “You’re so right. I should of known.”

In the morning, he left before Liz woke up...

He stood on the sidewalk in front of Jerry’s Hot Dog Stand. It was almost six o’clock, and Lois had said she would be there before six. But he couldn’t be sure — women were late, lots of times. Or, maybe, she wouldn’t come at all. She had hesitated when he phoned her — as if it was hard for her to make up her mind.

He glanced impatiently up the street. There weren’t so many cars, and he would have seen the blue convertible right away. Johnny set the paper bag he was carrying between his feet and took out a cigarette. He cupped his hands against the wind that was blowing in from the ocean. Dark clouds banked against the horizon, and there were whitecaps on the dark water. Not many swimmers were out there.

The cigarette didn’t taste good, and he tossed it away and picked up the paper bag again. He wished, suddenly, that she wouldn’t come. It was all worked out with Rusty, but, if she didn’t come, he wouldn’t have to go through with it. Yet there was a part of him that had to see her again. He felt mixed-up, not knowing which part of him was real. He knew, desperately, that it wasn’t good to be mixed-up this way.

He heard the roar of the roller coaster up the street, and he smelled the hotdogs from the grill of Jerry’s Hot Dog Stand, and he tried hard to figure things out straight. Figure out just what he wanted — because you had to know that. The time had come when he couldn’t kid himself any longer.

But it made his hangover stand up inside when he tried to figure it out, and then there wasn’t time anyway, because he caught sight of the convertible coming along behind a 1941 Chewy. Suddenly, he felt every nerve in him snap tight and brittle.

The convertible pulled over to where he was standing and stopped. He reached to open the door and tossed the paper bag on to the seat. He looked into Lois’s face and felt his guts knot. The mechanical organ at the Merry-Go-Round began to blare You Can’t Be True, Dear.

“Well?” Her lips pursed delightfully. The wind blew a lock of yellow hair across her forehead. He got into the blue convertible, and Lois pulled out into the street.

They drove for a few moments in silence — past the pitch games, the Fun House, the stands selling frozen custard. She turned off, away from the waterfront.

He found his voice then. “I bought some sandwiches and a couple of cans of beer. For a picnic.”

“I don’t have much time, Johnny.”

“It won’t take much time. After all, I came all the way out to bring back your wallet.”

“You could have sent it to me.”

“Yeah, I could have.”

But he could tell that she really wanted to be here, with him. He didn’t know how, but he could tell. “There’s a place up the road,” he suggested.

She followed his directions, turned off the highway, down a dirt road that led into a pine grove at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. The dark clouds were closer now, edging in toward the land.

“Oh, Johnny,” Lois said as he gave her a sandwich, “what is there about you?”

He looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know. Something restless — disturbed. It’s hard to tell.”

“Don’t try then.”

He kissed her lightly, almost as if it didn’t matter. Then he looked at his watch. It was later than he had supposed. _

“I really can’t stay,” she said. She hadn’t even unwrapped her sandwich. “I promised I’d get back.”

“And us?” Johnny asked. “You’re not giving us a chance.”

Lois looked at him searchingly, as if she was trying to see what really lay inside him. He felt strangely uncomfortable under her gaze, as if she could actually look inside him. He knew it didn’t matter just then that his face was a good-looking face, or that his body was slim and hard and well proportioned. He could see that for himself in the old mirror in his room, and it was only the outer part of him.

She was trying to probe deeper, and he didn’t want her to find his secret self. Yet he knew that, before very long, she would know. Because he would have to show her himself.

She said, very slowly, “You know, Johnny, we don’t have a chance — because I’m afraid of you.”

He tried to laugh. It didn’t sound right. And then she took out the car key. “So we’d better go,” she added.

He knew this was the time. The wind from the ocean felt very cold. Even the blood, beating in his temples, couldn’t drive the numbness out of him. Like Rusty said, he was chicken. This was the time, and he couldn’t do anything.

He heard the starter begin to purr, and then something broke inside him. He reached for the switch and cut the motor. He tried to block off any emotion — any sense that this was Lois. This was a car and a woman, and he had to do a job.

She looked at him a moment, straight into his face, her eyes going wide, her nostrils flaring, the blood draining from her cheeks. It almost got him — but then he said tightly, “It’s just the car I want. If you don’t make any trouble, I won’t hurt you.”

But she did make trouble. She tried to struggle. He had to clamp his hand over her mouth and almost choke her to keep her from screaming. As he was getting her out of the car, one of her arms came free and her nails scratched the side of his face. He had to slam her to the ground before she grew quiet.

He worked fast then, ripping off her blouse, tearing strips to tie her arms behind her back, and her ankles together. He stuffed some material in her mouth, having to pry open her teeth, and then he tied a gag around her head. He left her lying on the ground and gunned the big car down the dirt road, cutting into the highway and heading toward Lynn, where he was to meet Rusty and turn over the car.

He glanced at his watch. He was late — but Rusty would wait. Better not drive too fast, because that might call attention to himself.

Darkness was closing in. He switched on the headlights. The highway was almost deserted, and he drove faster than he should. But he was different, now — not the Johnny Martin he had known. He had given up everything — work, family, a girl he loved — to be a new Johnny Martin. A guy without any good in him, even though he looked all right outside.

The air, rushing against his burning face, stung his eyeballs. His grip on the wheel was tense, as if his fingers had grown rigid. His jaw was set so tight it sent an ache up into his forehead.

Headlights rushed toward him. He swerved just in time. Steady, Johnny, he thought. Get hold of yourself, or you’ll have an accident. Maybe kill yourself.

But Johnny was already dead. Funny, he could see that now, hurling along the road, with the headlights spraying out before him. He had been dying for a long time — ever since he had stuck up that store and gone to reform school. That ten dollars he had lifted from his old man’s till and a lot of things in between — little things at first, but growing bigger each time. Only never so big as this. Tyres sang under him, as he swung around a bend in the road.

Yes, look at yourself, Johnny Martin. You don’t need any mirror to see yourself now.

A figure came out of the shadows, as he braked. It was Rusty — Rusty coming over to the car — Rusty saying, “I got to give you credit, Johnny. It’s a beaut.” And then Johnny finding himself saying, “You were right the first time. I’m so chicken.”

Rusty had a hand on the car door. He sucked in a deep breath. “What d’ya mean? So chicken?”

Johnny was surprised how easy it was to answer. He felt sure of himself, with all the confusion washed away. “Just that I’m taking the car back where I got it.”

He heard the sudden wrench of metal, and then Rusty had the door open and his hand flashed out, stinging the side of Johnny’s face.

“Oh, no, not this time!” Rusty said. His voice was low and menacing. “Not after you fooled around with my woman. Besides, I need the dough.”

Johnny swallowed hard. His head was ringing from the blow. He bent forward, trying to get the motor started.

But Rusty slammed him hard against the side of the car. He knew a sudden fear that brought a cramp to his stomach. He remembered, with stunning vividness, the time Rusty had given Joe Levis a going over. The way the blood had looked, smeared over Joe’s face, as he lay crumpled on the sidewalk afterwards. Joe had gone to the hospital. He had been Rusty’s boy ever since. It could happen the same way to him.

Rusty had grabbed his shoulders, was pulling him across the seat, out from behind the wheel. Johnny tried to tear himself away.

“You no-good punk!” Rusty said between tight teeth.

Johnny doubled up a knee, straightened his leg, jamming it at Rusty. Rusty grunted and tugged at him. Johnny felt himself slide over smooth leather. He went down, sprawling, beside the car, banging his head against the pavement.

He struggled to his feet, a blazing light bursting inside his skull, a kind of crazy madness flooding through him, so that he didn’t care what happened to himself, as long as he showed Rusty he had meant what he said.

He jerked his body sideways, just as Rusty drove a fist at him again. Bone crunched sickeningly against metal. He heard Rusty cry out, saw him back off, bring up his battered fist and shake it, as if he was trying to understand what had happened.

“‘Let’s call it quits,” Johnny said. “You hurt your hand.”

For reply, Rusty cursed thickly. He charged Johnny like a wounded bull.

They were trading blows, then, the two of them — smashing, harm mering blows that tore flesh and bruised muscles.

He jammed his teeth together and lashed out, knowing now a desperate urgency, because he couldn’t last much longer. He thought Rusty was tiring. He knew his raw knuckles connected, ah though he felt nothing. The impact sent him staggering back. The convertible broke his fall. He stood leaning against the car, panting, hearing the soft thud as Rusty’s body crumped against the pavement. He thought, There lies the old Johnny Martin — beaten, finished, out like a light.

He said, “So long, Rusty. It had to be this way.”

They sat in the parked convertible, he and Lois. Out over the water, the clouds had disappeared, and a rising moon was making the whitecaps glisten.

“Johnny,” she said after a while, “I had a feeling you’d be back.”

He didn’t say anything. He rubbed a hand over his swollen jaw. He must look a mess. But he didn’t care. He’d break that mirror when he got home. It didn’t show him what was important — what sort of a guy he was inside.

Then he said, “Still scared of me?”

“Not any more.”

“Even after what I did?”

“If you hadn’t tried,” she told him, “you wouldn’t even be worth my contempt. You came close, Johnny — closer than you knew. But you aren’t anything — you aren’t even weak enough! Shall I drive you to the subway?”

It was the slap of courtesy that got him. She was right — he was nothing, going nowhere. On impulse, he got out of the car. He said, “No, thanks, I’m sorry.”

Wherever he was going, he was going to have to walk.

A Dress for Mary Lou

by Jay Carroll

Was it murder that had changed the State Trooper’s friends?

* * * *

Bill Corey stood very straight in the well-fitted, grey uniform. He made no move toward the pistol on his hip. “Go ahead, shoot!” he said quietly. “You tanned my britches when I was a kid. If it hadn’t been for you, bringin’ me up, I wouldn’t be standin’ here now in a state trooper’s uniform. I don’t aim to draw, Jess.”

The older man scowled. His shaggy, salt-and-pepper hair was uncombed, his fierce eyes deep in their sockets. “I never thought you was a coward, Bill.” His sharp voice was edged with steel. “I’m proud you ain’t real flesh an’ blood of mine. A man thet—”

“Quit stallin,’ Jess. If you’re gonna shoot me, get it over. You’ve got a choice. Either you go back to Warrington to stand trial for murder or you shoot me down right now. I take you back alive — or not at all.”

Bill saw the gun waver. The hard grey eyes went soft. “Why’d they had to send you?” the old man said with annoyance.

“ ’Twould have been better iffen it had been somebody we didn’t know.” He put the rifle back on its hooks over the fireplace.

“I asked to come,” Bill said. “You’re my people. A stranger might make a mistake. I knew Will Tubbman as good as you. From the time he was a kid, he was a slimy snake. But killin’ is a crime against the law, and Will was stabbed to death — not even given a fair chance to defend him-himself. Down in Warrington we call that murder.”

He let the stiffness go out of his back, relaxed into the cane-bottomed chair. “They sent a trooper by the name of Evan McGirr up here in civilian clothes. Day before yesterday his body came back express collect. He’d been stabbed to death with a thin-bladed knife. We took it as a warning that troopers weren’t welcome in Black Gum. We didn’t like it. The Commissioner thinks there’s no law here, at all.”

Halfway expecting the old man to jump for the gun, Bill loosed his final bolt. “Express company says you were the shipper, Jess.”

“That’s a lie. I never saw no stranger. You c’n ask Mary Lou.”

The girl came out of the corner where she had huddled in fright. She was a slim girl, with timid eyes and a birdlike way of moving her head and hands.

“Dad’s right,” Mary Lou said. “There’s been nobody here by the name of Evan McGirr. He’s sent no package at the express company, either.”

Bill said. “Thanks, Mary Lou.” He shot a quick, admiring glance at the faded, neat dress, the bare, brown legs. “You’ve grown considerable since the last time I saw you. Still go around with Peg Tyler?”

“Nope.” She looked askance at her father, then plunged on. “Peg got in trouble with a man. She wouldn’t tell me who it was.”

Bill pricked up his ears, giving no sign of his interest. “Too bad. Reckon Watt Tyler is plenty mad.” He changed the subject swiftly. “If Jess won’t object, I’d kind of like to go walkin-up the mountain before we go back to Warrington. No use to hurry—”

Jess Tatum interrupted harshly, “Mary Lou won’t go walkin’ with a man that’s yeller. I forbid it.” He made a quick motion toward the gun over the fireplace. “If you’re gonna take me back, you’d best get started. A man thet comes back to trade on his home folks’ affection—”

“Wait a minute, Jess.” Bill fidgeted uncomfortably. “Costs the state a lot of money to try a man for murder. I got to be sure you killed Will Tubbman. I got to know why you did it.”

Jess Tatum’s face was stone cold. “Leave the house, Mary Lou,” he said sharply. The girl instantly obeyed, and when she was gone, he went on: “I say I killed Will Tubbman. If that ain’t enough, I’ll tell you why. He promised Mary Lou a new dress iffen she’d meet him up the mountain.” He paused uncertainly, looked at the younger man squarely. “I met him instead.”

“Looks like you would have met Mary Lou on her way up to him and told her there wasn’t any use in going on. Pretty hard on a girl, findin’ a man that’s been knifed to death. You could’ve saved her that—”

“I done told you all you need to know.” Tatum’s eyes biased. “You keep frettin’ me, Bill, an’ I’m like to lose my head.”

Bill let his mind wander back to the early days when he had been growing up. When his mother died, leaving him an orphan at the age of ten, it had been Jess Tatum who appeared at the door of the house.

“Pack your things, boy,” he had said, warmly. “You’re comin’ to live with me an’ my Mary Lou.”

The transition was accomplished as easily as that. Jess was a silent, brooding sort of man, quick to anger, quick to cool. Bill had ah ways been afraid of him. If Tubbman had attempted to molest Mary Lou, there was no doubt that Jess Tatum would have killed him.

There was also the law as old as the settlement itself. Decent girls did not submit to the embrace of young men until there was an understanding, usually in the form of “permission to court.” from the head of the house. The law was doubly binding on the young folks. Girls who followed their independent, heedless desires were likely to hear of the suitor’s accidental death.

Men whose instincts grew stronger than reason might expect a knife thrust from the girl to cool their ardour. The mountainous country about Black Gum was no harder than its people.

Bill said, “We got the report back in Warrington that whoever killed Will Tubbman used a thin-bladed knife. I kind of thought you would have used the rifle, Jess.” He took a quick shot in the dark. “Maybe some of the women that Will went after would have used a knife — Peg Tyler, for instance — maybe even Mary Lou.”

The old man’s face was as bleak as a hickory stump in the dead of winter. “I admit to killin’ Will Tubbman. I done told you why. How I done it is my business. I’m goin’ back with you to Warrington.” He thrust out his jaw. “You leave Mary Lou out of this. An’ keep away from her.”

Bill got up slowly. “It isn’t only Tubbman’s murder. I got to find out who killed a state trooper. Back in Warrington they think it was you. You say you didn’t do it. I got to talk to Mary Lou.”

He strolled toward the door, outwardly calm, but inside the pulse pounded in his veins. Jess Tatum was used to having his word regarded as law.

As Bill walked quickly toward the clearing behind the house, he expected any minute to feel the sudden bite of a bullet. Only his blind faith that Jess wouldn’t shoot a man in the back kept him moving straight ahead without once glancing over his shoulder. He had come up here with the idea that Jess was innocent. In spite of the old man Bill Corey had to prove it. And there was only one person on earth who Jess would cover up for, Mary Lou Tatum.

Once in the clearing, he took a deep breath and smiled. Jess wasn’t going to shoot at him, after all.

Bill steeled himself now for a different kind of anxiety, the problem of trying to prove a murder on a friend he had grown up with here, his boyhood companion, Mary Lou.

Remembering so clearly the final scene at headquarters before he had started for Black Gum, Bill let the breath sob through his teeth, then squared his shoulders proudly. The Commissioner had blazed: “I don’t care how many hill-billies they kill off among themselves. But when they kill one of our finest troopers, it’s time we cleaned out that rats’ nest.” He looked mad enough to go to Black Gum himself. “I’ll send a whole company if it’s necessary.”

Bill remembered how his own face had flamed at the insult. The sergeant had whispered hurriedly to the Commissioner how easy it was to call names when you didn’t understand a people.

The Commissioner had apologised handsomely later. “Sorry, Corey. Wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d taken a swing at me. Didn’t realise I was talking about your people. You’ve got a fine record so far. Do you want to go up there — alone — and bring out the killer? Lots of times a man can do better work among his own people than a stranger. It was a mistake to send Evan McGirr in civilian clothes. But I won’t send you unless you want the job.”

“Have you got any idea who did it?” Bill had asked, fearing he’d hear a name he might recognise.

“For what it’s worth, yes. Feb low named Jess Tatum murdered this Will Tubbman. Trouble over a girl. Same man probably killed McGirr. Well, you want the job, Corey?”

He remembered the coldness that had crept along his spine at the mention of Jess. If Jess had to be arrested, it wasn’t fair to send anybody else. Then Bill had jumped at the chance, thinking Jess would understand why he had come. Just then the possibility that Mary Lou might have done it had never crossed his mind.

The man in the grey state trooper’s uniform sighed heavily as he searched the timber line. He disliked intensely what he must do now.

“Mary Lou?” he called softly. “I want to talk to you.”

Almost immediately the girl came out of a scrub thicket as though she had been waiting for his summons and wanting it eagerly. They sat on a pine log that Jess had recently hauled to the clearing to be sawed and split into stove lengths. Around them the air was crisp and cool.

“Jess thinks you murdered Will Tubbman,” Bill said bluntly. “Why?” He looked a little ill at ease.

The thin girl’s eyes grew wide; her mouth dropped open. “From the time I first told him about it, he said he did it. He never asked me even, if I did it. He couldn’t think I did it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Will Tubbman had been wantin’ to pay court. Dad kept puttin’ him off, sayin’ he had somebody else in mind. Ever since I got grown, Bill, it’s been like that. I didn’t care about Will. But the others, Dad would tell them all he had somebody else in mind. There isn’t anybody else, Bill. It’s just — Dad’s funny about men courtin’—”

“What about the new dress?” He looked at the faded dress she was wearing now. How many times had Mary Lou washed it and hung it out to dry in the hot sun, he thought.

“I ordered a new dress from Warrington with the money I made from hookin’ a rug. I couldn’t tell Dad. You know how he is, Bill. I still haven’t told him. I figured after I’d had the dress a few days, he’d calm down and say it was all right. Will Tubbman picked it up at the depot before I could get down. He asked me to meet him.” She blushed, and the colour started at her slim neck and worked up until her face flamed. “I thought it was all right.”

“And what happened when you met him?” Bill dug pugnaciously into the dirt at their feet.

“Why — nothin’! Dad found out. I went to meet him, and Will Tubbman was dead when I got there.” Mary Lou looked at the ground, then up again as she continued. “The dress was gone. Dad told me about it afterward. He said Will Tubbman was a—” She left the thought unspoken, and brushed vaguely at her eyes.

“Could Will Tubbman have been the man Peg Tyler got in trouble with?”

The girl hesitated. “Dad says he is, but I asked Peg. She said she hated Will; it couldn’t be him. Please tell me what will happen to Dad, Bill?”

“Nothing, I think,” he replied, and hoped Mary Lou would forgive him in case his prediction turned out to be wrong. “Watt Tyler warned me, when I talked to him at the depot, I was in a fair way to gettin’ my head blowed off, comin’ up here after Jess. Reckon I might slip down and tell him we’ll be leavin’ on the afternoon train. If you could see your way clear not to go back to the house for the next hour—”

Mary Lou’s mouth trembled, and she looked away self-consciously. “Dad will think you’ve been with me all that time. Like I say, he’s funny about things like that. He’ll be mad clean through. He might—”

“I’m not worried about myself. In an hour he might cool off, too. Don’t let him find you if he comes lookin’ for you, Mary Lou. You promise?”

She nodded, and he swung off toward the railroad along the familiar footpath that led through the woods. As a boy, curious about the wonders of nature, he had walked here thousands of times. Bill knew where the squirrels nested in the half-dead walnut tree off to the left. There had once been an eagle’s nest in the pine at the top of the rise. But to-day the harassed State trooper thought of other things.

Watt Tyler was puttering about the small station. He had a face like a hawk. His thin, sandy hair was combed so as to partially cover the bald spot.

“Find Jess?” he asked gravely.

“Yeh.” Bill studied the outline of the square room. “Expect I’ll have some trouble, Watt. I figure to take Jess out on the afternoon train. I want you to be sure to flag the local. I’ll have handcuffs on Jess. He won’t like it. I got to make Black Gum see that the law’s got a long arm.” Taking a deep breath, Bill blew it out sibilantly. “I won’t put the cuffs on Jess ’til the last minute. I hate to do it.”

Tyler spat on the bare pine floor. “You’re takin’ a big chance, Bill,” he said. There was admiration in his voice.

Bill said, “I’d kind of like to see Peg before I go back. I expect she’s grown into a right pretty woman.”

Tyler waved toward the house across the road from the depot. “Reckon Peg would like to see you. You’ll find she’s filled out some.” His eyes glinted with amusement. “You’ll find she’s still spunky, too.”

Bill grinned. He had almost forgotten. A spunky girl in Black Gum was a girl with a quick temper. Black Gum had more than its share of spunky people.

Bill understood the amusement he had observed in the old man’s eyes as he looked at Peg. She was wearing city clothes, even to her nylon stockings. Where Mary Lou was slim, Peg Tyler was all soft curves. The bloom of a peach was in her round cheeks and her silky hair framed her face engagingly.

“You look awful good, Bill,” she said, and he wished this visit were other than business.

The floor sagged a little under the weight of his steps as Bill moved to the settee. Peg sat with her legs crossed, in the rocker by the window. He studied her again, then said, quietly, “Mary Lou told me there’d been trouble with a man, Peg. I was sorry to hear it. I wanted—”

She interrupted easily. “I told Mary Lou about that to sort of cheer her up. I was surprised she hadn’t heard it before. The trouble started at a dance at Ferriter’s. Joe Ferriter invited me there even though he was playin’ fiddle. Time the dance was over, so many people had lubricated Joe’s fiddle arm that he was slumped in a comer with his head in his fiddle case. So Will Tubbman brought me home.

“Pappa was fit to be tied. He raved all over Black Gum that, if Joe Ferriter even got within shootin’ range, he’d give him a full charge of buckshot. Pappa wouldn’t hurt a fly. But his feelings were hurt. The more he ranted, the more people got to talkin’ I must have got in trouble with Joe Ferriter. He found out, finally, he was the one to blame for all the talk, and didn’t say any more about it.”

Bill knew she was telling the truth. No matter how he turned and sifted the evidence in his mind, suspicion always pointed back to Mary Lou — or Jess. Even if Mary Lou had related all she honestly knew about the new dress, there seemed a likelihood that something additional had happened on the mountainside.

Will Tubbman was there — for a good reason. Mary Lou explained it was by arrangement, to give her the dress that had just arrived. But there was no dress when Tubbman’s body was found. Jess said Will had promised her a dress..

Bill got to his feet, and, without conscious thought of what he was doing, started pacing the floor. Through the window he noticed that Watt Tyler was crossing the street from the depot.

“Here comes your father,” he said unhappily. “I had looked forward to talkin’ to you alone. I don’t have very long—”

Without a word Peg nodded and led the way toward the back door. Outside the house, she smiled. “The law isn’t trusted too far in Black Gum, even if it happens to be somebody we knew a long time ago.”

They walked through the field where the hay was already cut and racked, and struck up toward the coolness of the forested slope.

“Reckon I can’t talk as good as — Will Tubbman,” Bill said. “I got to tell you, Peg, there’s no girls in Warrington like the ones in Black Gum. I get lonesome—”

“If you talked as good as Will Tubbman, I wouldn’t like you anyway,” Peg said earnestly. She looked around cautiously. “He deserved killing, Bill. I’m not talking about myself,” she added quickly. “Oh, I saw Will now and then. Maybe at first I wanted to believe all them promises. I expect he did have a little money. His big mistake was going after Mary Lou. I could’ve told him the Tatums wouldn’t stand for trifling.”

Bill said quietly, “Mary Lou might have killed him. She says she didn’t, and Jess says he did. So I’m taking Jess back to Warrington to stand trial. I kind of think McGirr had it figured the same way.” He laughed grimly. “Jess was goin’ to use the rifle on me a little while ago. He may do it yet.”

She clutched his arm, apprehension in her eyes. “You watch out, Bill. Jess is mean when he’s riled.”

Bill gritted his teeth. This talk was getting him absolutely nowhere. There was such scant time now to learn what he had to know. Hating himself, he stopped suddenly at the edge of the glade, pulled Peg violently toward him. His lips found hers; he kissed her with a passion he did not feel.

“I’ve dreamed of doin’ this for a long time,” he said, holding her closely.

The girl whipped away with the flaming fury of a wildcat. From somewhere beneath her dress a thin, long-bladed knife appeared in her hand. “You’re not the man you were when you left,” she said tensely. “We’re not like the city girls. And you’ve forgotten, Bill — the Tylers won’t stand for trifling, either.”

The load he had carried in his heart was suddenly gone. In its place was the exhilaration of the gambler who has played a long shot against impossible odds and won. He backed away slowly.

“I’ll apologise for takin’ liberties,” he said. Then: “Mary Lou doesn’t carry a knife. I had to find out whether you did.”

Her voice was dry and flat. “Looks like working for the law gives a man special license not to be decent. You could’ve asked about the knife. I’ve got no call to lie to you.” The words stung sharply.

“I’m sorry, Peg,” Bill said gently. “We were always pretty good friends before. But somebody’s lyin’! It’s my job to find out who it is. That knife gave me a good idea.”

“What’s goin ’on between you two?” Watt Tyler had crept up quietly, and neither of them had known he was there. His eyes fastened on the knife in Peg’s hand. He glared at Bill, his craggy face in hard lines of resentment.

“My fault,” Bill admitted. “I gave Peg reason to be mad.” He grinned without humour. “She’s still spunky.”

Tyler looked from Peg to Bill, and back again at his daughter. The relief started in his eyes and spread over his hawk-like face. “You think Peg might’ve done it. I could’ve told you better. She wasn’t allowed to go with Will Tubbman; she didn’t like him, besides. That day he was killed Peg was at her grandma’s, over to Cedar Ridge. I’m sorry that you even suspected her. That other trooper, McGirr — he checked all that.”

As Bill walked back toward the house with them, he kept his eyes steadfastly on the ground. McGirr must have known about the knife Peg carried because his last report had stated that Peg Tyler might have killed Tubbman. But the report had later mentioned that this deduction appeared impossible. So Watt apparently was telling the simple truth.

Bill looked anxiously at his watch. His time was up and he had to leave. Bitterly he said, “Reckon I’d best apologise all around and get my prisoner. Pretty hard, havin’ to take the man that’s brought you up. I wanted to be dead certain before I took him in.”

Peg’s eyes were hard and unforgiving. But Watt Tyler shrugged amicably. Then he said, “They should’ve sent more than just you. Jess already killed one man sent to arrest him.”

Bill was careful to return by using the same direction into which he had vanished. He had an idea Mary Lou was close by, but he did not call. Jess was already mad enough and it would only make it worse for the two of them to appear together. Head up, he walked toward the house.

Jess was waiting inside, the gun still on its hook over the fireplace. “A man c’n only stand so much,” he raged. “I warn you, Corey.”

Bill was fumbling at his belt. “Hold out your right wrist, Jess,” he ordered. When Jess complied, he quickly snapped the handcuff over it. He fastened the other to his own wrist but did not snap it closed. “I arrest you for the murder of Will Tubbman,” he said.

They might have taken the path through the woods, leading down to the railroad or they might have ridden. Jess wanted it that way. When Bill said they’d walk down the main road, Jess lashed out, “You want to prove to all the folks you ain’t yeller, thet you c’n walk into Black Gum, arrest your man an’ walk out again. I should’ve killed you when you wouldn’t draw. I’m proud you ain’t—”

“Look, Jess,” Bill said softly, “I’m the law. You’ve got no call to criticize how I do my duty. You want to keep Mary Lou’s name out of this.” He swallowed down the doubts that choked his throat. “So do I. I’m doin’ this thing the way looks right. You can help—”

“Did Mary Lou tell you?” Jess burst out.

“She told me no more than she told you.”

From the drawn shutters of the houses and cabins along the way Bill knew there were eyes watching. Outside the station he halfway expected a hostile mob might be gathered. There was no one.

His job done, Tyler went inside the small station without speaking.

Almost dragging Jess, Bill followed.

“You were wrong, Watt,” Bill said. “Jess surrendered of his own free will.” He elevated the hand-cuffs so Watt could see.

Tyler opened the window and spat outside, and closed it again. The fear was naked in his eyes as he looked at Jess. “Ain’t another man livin’, Jess Tatum would surrender to. I warned that other trooper—”

“That’s the part that don’t fit,” Bill said. “I wanted to ask you about it. When I first talked to Jess, he says he never saw that trooper. Mary Lou didn’t see him, either. But you said it was Jess that brought in that box supposed to contain quartz samples and send it off express collect.”

Tyler grinned. “If Jess says he didn’t bring that box in here and send if off, he’s lyin’. I got witnesses to swear they seen him with the box.”

“You lie,” Jess flamed. “You paid me two dollars to bring you in a plain, pine box. I done it. The box had nothin’ in it.”

“Except the state trooper you’d stabbed in the back,” Watt taunted.

Bill felt the surge of elation in his heart. “I don’t recollect tellin’ you McGirr had been stabbed. I don’t recollect tellin’ anybody he’d been stabbed in the back. How did you know that, Watt?”

Tyler moved with easy grace. As though on springs, his hand sprang into the desk drawer, then went rigid with an ugly Luger clenched in his fingers. Casting loose the handcuff, Bill dived headlong into the midriff of the station agent. The gun exploded close to his ear. and he didn’t hear it. The bullet ploughed into his shoulder and he hardly felt it.

With Tyler’s arm clutched powerfully behind his back, Bill began to twist. Tyler’s gun dropped to the floor.

“You nasty little weasel, you framed this thing from start to finish!” Bill said.

“Jess done it, I tell you,” Tyler screeched desperately. “You’re breakin’ my arm. I’ll... kill you for this.”

Relentlessly, Bill applied more pressure. “Mary Lou had you order that dress. She paid you for it. You were the one put the idea in Will’s head about havin’ Mary Lou meet him. Only, you couldn’t give him the dress on account of company rules. It’s still here in the office, isn’t it, Watt? Answer, you devil, before I break your arm!”

Watt Tyler shook his head, but his eyes secretly peered toward a flat package on a shelf. Stooping, Bill picked up the Lugar Tyler had been forced to drop, walked swiftly to the shelf. He ripped open the package. Inside was a blue-flowered dress that could have fitted Mary Lou. He felt the material — it was so soft and lovely. Poor little Mary Lou, she’d never owned anything half so pretty in her life.

Bill needed more evidence than this, much more. Suddenly the walls were beginning to blur; the rough board ceiling was spinning crazily. He must not pass out now!

“Will Tubbman refused to marry your daughter, Watt. You warned Peg not to tell a soul in Black Gum who the man was. Then you threw out a big smoke-screen about how you were gunnin’ for Joe Ferriter. When you heard that Will was askin’ permission to court Mary Lou — and not gettin’ it — you saw your real chance.”

Bill stopped. This was all sheer guesswork. Every bit of what he was saying was hopeful bait. In court you have to prove every accusation. Watt Tyler would deny everything.

“I reckon I c’n prove that,” Jess said suddenly. “ ’Twas Watt told me Mary Lou was gettin’ a dress from Will Tubbman.” He stopped. His eyes were hot coals in his face. “In fact, ’twas him that made me believe Mary Lou had used a knife on Will.” He started toward Tyler, his eyes wild, his hands flexed.

Tyler cringed, “Stop ’im, Bill,” he pleaded hoarsely. “He’ll kill me. You know he will. You’re the law. Stop ’im — hurry.”

“You admit killin’ Will Tubbman? You admit framin’ Mary Lou with some hokeypokey about Will havin’ her dress?”

“Keep him away. Yes — I admit it.”

“You admit killin’ Trooper McGirr?” Jess came closer to Tyler.

“Yes. McGirr tricked Peg into tellin’ him she had been seein’ Will regular. That’s why I wanted to know what Bill asked Peg this afternoon. He said he wasn’t gonna arrest Jess ’til he found out more... Stop him!”

Jess’s big hands had found Tyler’s skinny throat.

“Let him go,” he ordered. “He’s my prisoner, Jess.”

The blackness was closing in again. “In the name of the state I appoint you my deputy, Jess Tatum. See that the prisoner—” The floor rushed up to meet him...

When he came to Bill was back at the Tatum house. He was stretched out on the settee with his shirt off and a neat white bandage on his shoulder. The package he had opened at the station, finding the blue dress, was on the table — only the box was bare now, Bill noticed.

Jess puttered about the fireplace on the other side of the room. On the floor Watt Tyler was lying, tied hand and foot.

“You wasn’t in shape to take your man back to Warrington,” Jess said, understating the case. “I brought you here to sort of rest up.” He was quiet a long time. “Been on my mind, them things I said about you bein-yeller. A man gets to frettin’. He says things he don’t mean.”

Bill looked at his deputy, smiled and said, “This is a good job, workin’ for the state, Jess. There’s a place I know in Warrington could be rented. There’d be enough room for you and Mary Lou. You know I had ideas about Mary Lou. Reckon I’ve had ’em since before I left Black Gum. But she said you had another party in mind. If you could see you way clear—”

Jess banged the hearth kettle with a clumsy foot. “I never had but one party in mind, Bill. With the trouble an’ all, I reckoned maybe you wouldn’t see things my way. So I tried to keep her clear of bein’ mixed up in Tubbman’s killin’. I see now I done it wrong—”

“This party you had in mind?”

Jess ran a finger through his unkempt hair, “Reckon it’s been you, Bill, from the time I came up to your house an’ got you when your mother died.”

Bill Corey got to his feet. He was a little dizzy, but he made it. He started up toward the clearing, toward the scrub thicket where he knew she would be waiting. He strained his eyes, searching the distant blue speak impatiently. And as he walked nearer he knew Mary Lou had put on her new dress just for him.

You Wash, and I’ll Dry

by Charles Irving

There are husbands who take joy in wearing an apron and helping out in the kitchen. Other men may drop the dishcloth and reach for a knife.

* * * *

It was raining hard, and the wind was blowing in angry gusts.

As John got off the bus in Queens, near the subway entrance, he swore irritably. It was just like that pompous fool, Jimpson, to insist on giving him a lift, and then to drop him far from the boulevard — so that he had to get a bus. John hated buses, and preferred to do the whole journey from Manhattan by subway.

An alleyway offered a short cut to his house from the bus stop — although not from the subway station. He used it seldom, and thought of it mentally as the back way.

As he stumbled along the broken alley pavement, John came to the conclusion that he hated everything — not only buses, but every created thing. It was dark, it was wet, and, once or twice, his feet slipped. The old wound in his head throbbed.

He reached the front door of the little house on which he vaguely hoped, some day, to pay off the mortgage, took out his latchkey and went in. His wife was moving about in the kitchen.

He hung up his dripping coat and hat and went into the dining room. His wife brought the dinner in, glanced at him sharply and, sensing his mood, said nothing. For a time they ate in an aura of glum silence. At length, however, he expressed grudging appreciation.

“Haven’t had a better feed for some time,” he admitted.

A curious expression came over his wife’s face. “Not even yesterday,” she asked gently, “when you had lunch at the Silverstone Grill with that girl from your office?”

He sat up sharply. “Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter who told me, John,” she replied, rather wearily. “The only thing is, we haven’t much money, and the cost of living is still going up. Is it really fair to spend your money on that girl?”

“Money, money, money! That’s all you think about. Who earns the money, I’d like to know? Who works for it, eh, my sweet?”

“Very well, John,” she said with the sad submissiveness he detested. “I suppose you’ll do as you like. You always have. Let’s get these things cleared away.” She rose, and began collecting the plates.

He sat there, unheeding, muttering to himself. The throbbing in his head grew worse.

Finally he got up and went into the kitchen. She had filled the sink with hot water, had begun to wash up. Mechanically, through force of habit, he took up the dish cloth. “You wash,” he said in a toneless voice. “I’ll dry.”

She said nothing — simply went on washing, stacking the plates and dishes on the draining board. Idly, he picked up the carving knife they so seldom used.

“John,” she said, without looking round, “it is really getting rather difficult — about the money, I mean. Do you think you could let me have a little more, for the household budget? I don’t mind your taking the girl out so much — but I do mind letting things get shabby when they ought to be — well, kept nice, or replaced when they wear out.”

A flame of anger surged up within him. Her back was towards him, as she rinsed the vegetable dish. Mentally choosing a spot, on the left side, he drove the knife into her back with all the force he could muster, stepping aside as he did so, in case the blood spurted. She collapsed over the sink.

He stepped back with a gasp of horror at what he had done. He stood there, trembling violently, for a long time. Presently, he got hold of himself. His hands were still shaking, but he was able to think coherently. He must get away. Yes, but first he must make it look like — like what? Suicide was impossible. It would have to be an attack — an attack by some tramp or marauder...

He went to the back door, unbolted it, took off his shoes, stepped out in his stocking feet. He found a muddy patch in the tiny yard and trod in it. Then he came back in and crossed the kitchen to the sink, leaving a satisfactory trail of vague, amorphous, muddy prints.

To touch his wife’s body brought on a kind of sick horror — but the thing had to look as if she had been attacked. He seized it, pulled it away from the sink, gripped the front of her dress, tore it violently. Then he let the body fall, bent down and tore one of her stockings.

Finally — and for this, he had to turn his head away — he picked up a brush with long stiff bristles and a heavy wooden handle. Holding it by the bristles to avoid leaving fingerprints, he struck her with it across the face.

He looked at the sink. He must leave that as it was — it appeared natural enough — the washed dishes stacked on the left, the unwashed cutlery waiting on the right, the water still soapy.

What about the carving knife? Nerving himself, John dropped it into the still warm water in the sink. Then he looked at his feet. They were almost dry and no longer left prints on the linoleum.

He went out into the hall, put on his hat, coat and gloves, searched about until he found his wife’s handbag. This he took into the kitchen. There he emptied the contents on the floor and put in his pocket the little money it contained.

From a drawer in the dresser, he took out a small, cheap cash-box. It was unlocked, but he deliberately locked it and tossed the key out of sight on the top shelf of the dresser. He forced it open again with a screw driver, removed and pocketed the money, then threw it down on the floor, beside the handbag.

This seemed about all he could do. It looked pretty good, he thought. He went to the back door, put on his shoes again and went out, leaving the door open and the lights on.

It was lucky he had not come by subway, as he normally did. Plenty of people at the station knew him. Very well, then, he would hop a bus to Queen’s Village and spend an hour or so in the bars — get good and drunk, perhaps. Then he’d come home late by subway. The station attendant would notice him. He’d buy a batch of tokens and would remark that he had been on a pub-crawl, drinking, ever since Jimpson had dropped him off.

Who would find her? With something of a shock, he remembered that her sister Mabel, and Mabel’s husband, had arranged to come round after supper, for “a drink or two and watch the fights on T.V.”

Well, that was okay — it would make things easier. By the time he got home, the police would be there and he’d have only to stick to his story.

In Queen’s Village, over his first double bourbon, he thought of two improvements on his story. First, on his way to this bar, he had noticed a movie, with the name of a picture he had already seen. He would say he had dropped in at this movie, before beginning his pub-crawl.

The second improvement was an answer to the inevitable question — why had he not gone home? Well, he would say he had phoned his wife — they couldn’t check that — and told her he’d be late, as he was meeting a business acquaintance for a drink. To-morrow, first thing, he’d get hold of Ben Tomlin and reproach him with not having turned up for this appointment. Tomlin was never sober after eight o’clock, and had a memory like a sieve — he wouldn’t even try to deny it.

It was in the fourth bar he visited that he switched bourbon to beer. He stood, with a glass in his hand, listening vaguely to the conversation of two very fat men who stood near by.

“Well, I’ve told her before,” said one of the men, “that I won’t have all that yack-yack and gossip going on every day in my house. Like a flock of hens, some of these women. You’d think they’d no homes of their own. So I told her, well, I said, it’s got to stop, see?”

“Ah,” said the other man weightily. “You can tell them.”

“That’s exactly what I’m getting to. I go in last night, see, after supper, and she’s washing up. ‘Have those cackling women been around again?’ I says. ‘No,’ she says. So I say, ‘How is it you’re washing up four cups and four plates and four of everything?’ And then she says...”

There was a crash, as a beer glass fell to the floor. The two fat men turned. The man who had held the glass was looking at them, with an expression of horror. But he wasn’t seeing them. He was seeing, instead, a little picture, no longer remote but very vivid and real — a picture of a kitchen sink, of washed plates, of unwashed cutlery.

Two of everything! His fingerprints would be on that unwashed cutlery! As he turned and stumbled out, the throbbing in his head came back, harder and angrier than ever. Half an hour later, they removed his body from under a sub way train in Queens’ Village Station.

The Deadly Innocent

by Theodore Sturgeon and Don Ward

Lance was no Literary man, but when he met glamorous Eloise, author of best-selling romances, he was a gone gander. Just how far gone, Lance had no idea until later.

* * * *

People love Eloise Michaud — by the millions they love her. Eloise wrote To Bed, To Bed, which sold more copies than Gone With the Wind — more, even, than Furilla’s Rose, Which Ellie Michaud also wrote. The critics throw up their hands and the sophisticated cry corn, and she sells and sells and sells.

She writes as if she truly believes in the triumph of good over evil. Eloise does believe — even, sweetly and firmly, to enforcing virtue by summary execution. But neither readers nor critics know about that. Her characters for all their Diors and Dusenbergs live in the age of chivalry, when knighthood was in flower, and dispense unalloyed and unabashed romance. Millions love it, and her.

Eloise, in turn, loved a guy. She met him at a literary tea, right after he had called a newspaper man Mister and then punched him on the nose.

“You can’t talk about Miss Michaud that way around me, Mister.” Wham!

She asked somebody who he was, and, for a while, nobody could find out, because he had nothing to do with the book business, he was only one of the loving millions.

When she did hear his name, that was about it, all by itself. The only time she had ever voted in her young life, it was for Vito Marcantonio, and that sight unseen and solely because she had never heard a lovelier name.

The honest-to-Christmas name of this cavalier of the cocktails was Lancelot deMarcopolo, pronounced MarCOPolo. He was in the automobile business, not the business that buys and sells cars, but the business that buys and sells car dealers.

Eloise got herself introduced by a queenly crook of the fingers. She acknowledged him with a regal inclination of her kitten head and demanded the rosebud from his lapel. She took the flower and, holding it with both hands, placed it in the soft concavity between her chin and her lower lip. Over it, she glowed at him.

During their subsequent meetings, which were soon and often, Lance confessed and anatomized his passion for her. He even gave her its (the passion, of course) biography. It had been born of a book-jacket, the one responsible for the only really nice thing ever said about Eloise Michaud in a metropolitan review: “The photo portrait on the back jacket will move as many books as, say, good writing might. To be honest, however, the picture is worth quite the price of the volume. Miss Michaud is the most scrumptious scrivener ever to set pen to the paper of a book-club contract.”

Lance deMarcopolo bought this picture, book attached, for his night table, and found himself reading the thing. It was the first real book he had read all the way through since Raggedy Andy and it entranced him.

“Who,” he once answered a critical friend, “wants to read about people you know, anyway?”

He found complete harmony between book and portrait. Both were open, honest, innocent, good. He was not disenchanted as he came to know her, either. He found what he looked for. Other men had found the same things, but he was the first to believe his own eyes.

Ultimately he asked her to marry him — just what she wanted him to ask — and he did it just the way she wanted him to, in a penthouse, on his knees, with the lamps low, and sweet music murmuring from somewhere. She said yes, and he took her home at a decent hour and removed his hat before kissing her goodnight. Eloise sighed as the door closed after he left, then went and banged the typewriter all night.

They set a date and made a lot of arrangements, which required pretty close timing what with his out-of-town affairs and her lecture tour and press interviews and all. It was his charming conceit to have her begin married life with nothing she had owned before — everything new, everything custom made.

Eloise was charmed — with all that royalty money in the bank she could afford it. Exceptions to the regime of burnished newness were few — the manuscript and notes for her unfinished book, the ancient typewriter on which she had written everything she ever published, some heirloom jewellery.

Then Binghamton reared its head.

She called him, in desperation, at the last possible moment and explained. This was the one lecture she hadn’t been able to cancel or postpone. The only possible way to handle everything in time for the honeymoon plane reservations was for her to go to Binghamton now — and so, would he pick up just those one or two things at her place and get them checked somewhere safe.

She’d leave the door on the latch and put everything where he could see it when he came in. There was a dear, dear man, what would she ever do without him? Lance soothed her and said of course he would do it, or anything else his little princess commanded; all she had to do was just give him tiny little hints, she needn’t even ask. He said they would meet at the airline terminal in the morning, and added a number of other remarks having much to do with a new life in a new world and little to do with this narrative.

As it turned out, his agreement was impulsive and impractical. It was acutely inconvenient for him to do anything of the kind. He realised this as he set down the phone, and experienced one second of horror at his impracticality. This was followed by a towering disdain for himself — What, call yourself in love? Deny your little princess a little favour just for a little inconvenience?

His pendulum swung violently to the other extreme. He jammed his hat on, snapped one order — “Take care of everything, Joe” — at his thunderstruck assistant, and took, not an hour, but the entire day for his princess’ small favour.

Once he had accomplished the enormous thing, he ceased to worry or even think about it — perhaps the secret of his considerable success — and, turning his back on chaos, gave himself over to the service of his beloved.

He found the place easily, took the elevator upstairs and went down the narrow corridor to her room. He stood there for a long moment, lost in emerald mists of reminiscence and shocking-pink clouds of anticipation, then removed his hat and turned the knob. He clicked the lock as he closed the door behind him and stood, smiling fatuously into the sweet disorder of her parting from this chrysalis.

Much of the furniture was gone, and the pieces that were left were all tagged — for the Salvation Army, for the superintendent, for one or two persons whose names he didn’t recognise. In one corner of the room was a tumbled clutter of miscellany — a scratched tabouret, some pictures with broken frames, a four-foot model of an Eskimo kayak, a mound of books, papers and magazines, dusty curtains, drapes and slip-covers. Tacked to the north wall, strung around the tabouret and tacked again to the west wall, was a piece of twine, forming a sort of fence around this particular jetsam. Hanging from it was a piece of paper folded in half. On the paper, lettered legibly and tersely, were the words THROW OUT.

Piled just inside the door were the things she wanted to keep, from all her past, to take into her life with him. There were the old typewriter and a mahogany case — the heirlooms. On the top of the case sat a cardboard box, the kind in which one buys a ream of bond paper. It was lettered WIP, which he properly translated as WORK IN PROGRESS.

On this lay the heavy gold-and-leather frame in which he had enshrined his picture. All my love, Lance, and, eclipsing this, was a folded sheet of paper. He picked it up. It read, Lance, I do love you so, Ellie.

Although it was hardly inspired copy, it stopped his heart for a giddy moment. Anyone else might read those words as just those words — he heard them in her eager half-whisper.

He was delicately fanned by her long lashes as they swept up on do and down on so. He knew her special fragrance and even, for a moment, sensed a sort of nearness which was not heat nor odour nor sound, but just — nearness. He let his breath whistle through his nostrils and stood there, shaking his head and murmuring her name.

He opened his eyes on the dangling sign which said, so pitilessly, THROW OUT, and for the very first time felt a small curl of regret. She had so submissively agreed to his half-playful dictum to wipe out the past, that he had never thought of what it might cost her.

He crossed to the twine barrier and ran his gaze over the clutter behind it. He suddenly bent and took up another bond-paper box, also with WIP inscribed upon it. It was dusty and cracked, and written across one corner was Furilla’s Rose.

Here, he thought, were the work-sheets, the carbons, the notes — all the mysterious machine-filings and mould-castings from which a great novel comes — filings and castings Eloise had lived with, slaved over, hoped and dreamed upon — her second novel. Now, because of his arbitrary whim, they were tossed on a heap with a broken kayak and some dusty drapes, under a sign which commanded THROW OUT.

His passion for her mounted the shoulders of his strange reverence for books, a reverence sometimes encountered in the non-reader, and rose towering over him. He took the box over to the stenographer’s chair pushed against the window, sat down with it on his lap, opened it, read—

Furilla threw back the drapes and let in a gush of dawn, a very shout of ruddy gold. Then, standing before the tall pier-glass, she flung away her robe and made another daybreak, another rosier morning in the room.

Yes, it was the famous opening of Furilla’s Rose. How strange it looked in typescript, in grey-haloed carbon! What currents, what depths flowed and swirled in his kitten-princess!

He leafed on.

“Bitch!” Kane shouted hoarsely. “You... you bitch!” His red-rimmed eyes swung close as he bent over her, sitting cool and poised. “Say something, damn you! Can’t you hear me?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Furilla quietly, “I’ll have a crumpet.” She smiled up into his purple, baffled face and added, “Yes, I hear you. The last thing I heard, the last thing a lady could hear, was when you offered me a crumpet.”

That’s my Ellie! thought Lance deMarcopolo fondly. It, it was ugly; she didn’t know it was there until it went away.

He skimmed on, through the tremendous sequence where Furilla met Maserac and went to live in his house. Maserac was an Older Man, and poor Furilla was quite sure that Older Men were safe.

“I’m a very lonely man,” said Maserac, “and to have you in my big old house would be like having the sun shining in all the windows at once.”

“Oh, you mustn’t be lonely! I’ll come, I’ll do everything for you.”

He tilted her heart-shaped face up with his strong old hand and looked piercingly down into her eyes. “Ah, Furilla — do you know what... everything... might mean?”

“Yes, oh yes!” she cried. “You never had a little daughter. I’ll be your very own dear little daughter!”

Maserac’s hand fell away. “I’m ashamed,” he whispered, “so ashamed!”

That was a close one, thought deMarcopolo admiringly. He turned the leaf over, and a blue slip fell out. He bent and picked it up. It was from a desk memo pad and was imprinted with Office of the Publisher. He didn’t mean to read it, but he couldn’t help it.

It’ll be just like having the sun shining in all the windows at once.

I’ll have a cab in front of your place at seven.

Your own,

Brill.

DeMarcopolo sat staring at the paper, holding it between thumb and forefinger, flapping it like a small, blue wing. Brill... Brill? Oh! Brill MacIver! That old fool — the publisher who...

He shook himself, or shuddered, then set the box down on the floor. He got up and took off his topcoat and draped it over the back of the chair, then sat down again. He put the box back on his lap. He didn’t skim it lightly now, though he didn’t know why. He went rapidly through the sheets.

He got to that scene between Furilla and young Harald. Harald had come into Furilla’s life “like a great storm” and, in a famous sequence, there had been a storm — a beaut. It built and built outside, glaring and crashing, silhouetting Harald against its lightning flashes as he climbed in her window. It built and built still more as he pressed closer and closer to Furilla, until, when he reached her, the clouds rolled and the thunder banged and, at last — zing! — a mighty flash burned down the boathouse.

Just here, a paper-clip separated some pages from the main manuscript. It was the scene when, next morning, Furilla awoke, alone, bruised, strangely disturbed, and considered what she was to do.

She rose, trembling, and ran to the mirror. A dream, a dream — surely it was a wonderful, terrible dream! But no — there in the smooth hollow between shoulder and neck, lay the mark of the beast. “Oh!” she cried, herself to her heart. “Oh wonderful, wonderful beast!

“Maserac!” she screamed.

The sound of her own voice frightened her. She cast about wildly, like a frightened animal, then ran to the wardrobe and threw on the lame hostess gown. When the old man opened the door, she stood like a pillar of gold, her hair, her eyes aflame.

“Maserac, Maserac, he loves me!” she sang.

And she told him, told him all of it, each syllable bringing her closer to the joy she knew he would feel for her, for her love, for the life she had begun with Harald. And, when she had finished, she ran to him, held his shoulders. “Maserac, isn’t it wonderful?”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” he repeated, and cold shock ran through her at the knell of his voice. “Poor, poor little bird!”

“What? Why do you say that, why?”

“Dear little Furilla, don’t you know that true love doesn’t come like a storm? It grows like a flower, unseen, until suddenly it’s there, blooming.”

She recoiled from him. “I... I thought you’d be glad for me, for Harald and me. I love him, love him, do you hear? And I’m glad, glad!”

Lance deMarcopolo sat quite still, his eyes on the manuscript but not doing anything. He remembered the scene, but that was not the way it had happened in the book.

He uttered a soft, pulled grunt and turned the page. Under it, lay a pink flimsy with some single-spaced typescript on it. He knew that Ellie used pink second-sheets for her correspondence, white for her work. This must be the copy of a letter to somebody, and perhaps he — but before he could have any doubts about it, his quick eye had taken it in.

Hennigar, Hennigar. Hobart Hennigar — it’s like music. Oh Hobie, Hobie, I’ve been thinking of you, missing you, though it’s been only an hour now, thinking about the wonderful love we have, the wonderful life we shall share. Hurry back to me, my darling. I do love you so.

I do love you so. A numb place existed suddenly in the pit of Lance’s stomach. He did not permit himself to think. He went on to the next sheet — an original, typed with a heavy hand and a pale ribbon on a piece of business stationery with the letterhead torn off.

Got your note. Been thinking, too, especially since I got it. You can’t be serious, Ellie. Don’t tell me you fell for that guff I was handing you. I don’t know what you thought, but I thought I was kidding, talking like those knights-in-armour in your lousy novel. Charades, you know. As for what else happened, why not? Fun’s fun.

I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I can’t get myself tangled up in anything like this right now, or ever, and it’s only right to tell you so, once and for all. I have to say it again — you can’t be serious! Or — do you really believe people do things like in your book? H.

I shouldn’t, thought deMarcopolo in panic. This has nothing to do with... But he went on to the next one — another pink carbon.

Brill, dear, I’ll just leave this where you’ll find it when you get there, I can’t face you now. I’m going back to town. I wish I were dead. I needn’t be dead, I’ve been killed, killed! Last night, while you were in the city, Hobart Hennigar did what you tried to warn me about — now I know, now I understand, when it’s too late, I found out this afternoon.

Brill, he talked to me the way I’ve always dreamed a man should talk to a woman. He was... I thought he was so wonderful, and before I knew it, it was too late. And now I know what he really is, it was all a game to him, and he tells me he thought it was all a game to me, too. I despise myself, Brill, dear, but Hennigar — oh! If I were a man, I’d kill him, for he’s murdered a most precious part of me. Ellie.

Next was an imprinted office memo, headed Office of the Publisher. Typed by a firm, even hand, were a few lines, which deMarcopolo read without hesitation.

Ellie, come back. I’ve got to talk to you about this. Don’t worry. It will be all right. But come back — you worry me.

DeMarcopolo shook his head rapidly, like a man swimming up out of unconsciousness, and then went back to his reading. Again, it was manuscript. Same scene, but — oh...!

She rose, trembling, and ran to the mirror. A dream, a dream, surely it was a terrible, terrible dream! But no — there in the smooth hollow between shoulder and neck, lay the mark of the beast. Oh! she cried, herself to her heart. Oh beast, wicked, brutal beast!

“Maserac!” she screamed.

The sound of her own voice frightened her. She cast about wildly, like a frightened animal, then ran to the wardrobe and threw on the gold lame hostess gown. When the old man opened the door, she stood like a pillar of fire, her hair, her eyes aflame.

“Maserac, Maserac, he’s killed me!”

And she told him, told him all of it, each syllable tom from her, agonising, yet strangely eager, for each syllable brought her closer to the comfort, the strength, protection — all wrongs avenged — which she knew her dear friend would have for her. And, when at last she had finished, she ran to him, blind with tears, and grasped his shoulders.

“He ought to be killed, killed, for what he’s done!”

“It’s terrible, terrible!” Cold shock ran through her at the sound of his voice, for here was no anger, no protecting arm. Here was only an uneasy laugh. He said, “But — perhaps it isn’t so bad.”

“What? Why do you say that, why?”

“Dear little Furilla, I know it hurts — but it always hurts to learn something important. You have been safe with me — only when you turned away from me, did anything hurt you. How you know — now, thanks to him, you can turn to me, be with me, be safe forever, with never a new temptation or hurt.”

“Killed!” she cried, “he has to be killed for what he did to me!”

“My dear child,” said Maserac, as slowly his arms came about her. “My dear, my dear...”

“No, no!” and she pushed away from him. “He must be punished, he must be destroyed, or there can be no more Furilla, no more for you, no more, even, for me...”

The next one was another hand-written note on the Office of the Publisher memo paper. “What did she keep them for?” Lance asked himself in amazement. Reluctantly, he admitted he knew the answer. He read—

Ellie, for heaven’s sake answer your ’phone, or, better still, let me see you. You know I would do anything on earth for you, but this — honey, to ask for such a thing, even to want it, is insane. Revenge is childish, anyway. Snap out of it, lamb. Get to work again and sweat it out of your system.

Your own

Brill.

Another pink carbon read—

Work? How can I work? He has to be punished, Brill, destroyed. Revenge has nothing to do with it, and I’m surprised you should think of such a thing. It’s just that, when someone helpless is hurt, someone strong punishes the wrongdoer for it. It’s the way things are. And I thought you were the man strong enough. He has to be destroyed, Brill, or there can be no more Furilla, no more for you, no more, even, for us.

Ellie.

So neat, thought deMarcopolo, so orderly. All in sequence — carbon and second sheets, in moments of passion. He picked up another publisher’s memo.

He read—

Ellie, this has gone on long enough. I haven’t seen you for weeks, and I’m frantic. Don’t you know the Book Club contract deadline is almost on top of us now? You’ve just got to have the first draft of Furilla’s Rose by contract time, or we’ll lose the whole deal. Your own career is at stake. If you don’t care about that, think about me.

B. MacI.

A pink carbon followed.

Everything I had to say to you I said in my last note. If you have it, read it again. If not, I’ll send you a copy.

E.

And—

Ellie, you’re not keeping copies! Burn them, now. Oh, you’re innocent, you’ve got to wake up and live in a real world, Ellie. I mean it!

Now, listen, honey, I hadn’t meant to tell you this, but I’m at the end of my rope. Everything I own is tied up in this business and, for years, I’ve been holding it together with my bare hands and a big, bright smile, hoping against hope that the big best seller would come along. Well, it did — To Bed, To Bed was it, and you wrote it.

But a hole that deep takes a lot of filling up. Even sales like that couldn’t do it, and I won’t tell you how much I still owe. To make it worse, now that I have one big property, my creditors, people who for years just let things slide along, now suddenly want to take over. I can’t let them, Ellie — not now, not at my age, not with real freedom, real solvency, right in my grasp for the very last time. All I need is one more big seller, and you’ve got it there for me, and you won’t let me have it. Ellie, I beg you, on my knees I beg you, finish the book!

Brill.

I hate pink, thought deMarcopolo with sudden fury. He controlled the hand which wanted to crush the pink sheet and read—

I have said all I can say. I enclose a copy of it. Read it again.

E.

A telegram — its porous yellow startled him like an explosion.

ONLY TEN DAYS TO CONTRACT TIME FOR HEAVEN’S SAKES ELLIE AT LEAST LET ME SEE YOU.

BRILL MacIVER.

And then, the shortest pink carbon of all—

Read it again.

E.

DeMarcopolo picked up the next one, Office of the Publisher, squinted at it, then set the box down on the floor and stood up. He moved to the window, leaned into the light and spelled out the writing slowly, his lips moving. It was scratched and scrawled, the paper crumpled, speckled with ink-flecks where the pen had dug in and splattered.

I must be crazy, and I wouldn’t wonder. Nothing seems real — you, soft little you, holding out like that for such a thing, I listening to it. No money, no business in the world, is worth a thing like this, I keep telling myself, but I know I’m going to do it. Try

Down at the bottom of the memo sheet was a wavery series of scrawls which at first seemed like the marks one might make to try out a new pen — a letter or two, a series of loops and zigzags. But as he stared at it, it became writing. As nearly as he could make it out, it read—

I did, and he didn’t know why. My blood damns you, Ellie.

Lance deMarcopolo turned like a sleepwalker and slowly put the crumpled memo down on the pile of papers he had already gone through. He stood still, swaying slightly, then moved unsteadily toward the corner where the telephone squatted on the floor, like a damsel in a hoopskirt. He picked it up, held the receiver to his ear. It was still connected. He dialled carefully.

A cheerful female voice said, “Post-Herald.”

“Get me Joe Birns... Joe? Lance here.”

“Hi, y’old bibliophile! Don’t tell me you’re gettin’ cold feet, old man. Call the whole thing off and give your old pal a scoop.”

“Knock it off, Joe.”

“Hey! ’Sa matter, Lance?”

“Joe, you can find things out without anybody knowing who’s asking.”

“Shucks, Lance, sure. What’s—”

“Brill — MacIver Brill — I want to know what happened to him.”

“Brill? He’s dead.”

“I know, I know.” It seemed, somehow, hard to breathe. “I mean, I want to know how he died. And somebody else, too — hold on.” He put the ’phone down on the floor and walked back to the box. He pawed through the papers for a moment, then returned to the ’phone. “Joe?”

“Yuh?”

“Somebody called Hobart Hennigar. I think he’s dead, too.”

“Hobart Hennigar,” murmured Joe like a man taking notes. “Who dat?”

“That’s what I want to know. Call me back, will you, Joe — fast?” He read the number off the telephone.

“Sure, Lance. Hey, Lance, are you — is there anything...?”

“Yes. Joe — find me that information.” Lance hung up.

He looked vaguely about the room, everywhere but at the box. Yet, ultimately, he went back to it, inevitably drawn. Slowly, he sat down and picked it up, still not looking at it. His hands found the unread portion and slid over it like a blind man’s. At last he lowered his eyes and looked.

It was only manuscript:

... and threw on the gold hostess gown. When the old man opened the door she stood like a flame, eyes like coals, hair afire in the golden morning. “Maserac. Maserac, he’s killed me!”

And she told him, told him all of it, each syllable tom from her, agonised yet strangely eager, for each syllable brought her closer to the comfort she knew that her dear friend would somehow have for her. And, when at last she had finished, she ran to him, blind with tears, and hid in his arms.

“My dear, my poor little bird,” said Maserac. His arms closed around her. “Try to forget, Furilla. To-night — tomorrow — this will be a world in which Harald does not exist.” He put her firmly from him, looked for a long time into her eyes, then slowly turned to the door.

“Maserac, Maserac, what are you going to do?”

“Do?” He smiled gently. “Surely there is only one thing to do. How could there be a choice?”

He left her.

In the morning, they found Harold’s tattered body slumped in his cabin. And Maserac, dear Maserac — his fury had crushed, not only Harald, but his own great heart, his dear, dear heart. He lay in an open field, his slack hand still on the horsewhip, his unseeing eyes turned to the sunrise, and Furilla knew that her name lay silent on his dead lips.

“Yeah,” whispered deMarcopolo. The sound was like sighing. “That was the way the thing came out in the book.”

Everything came out for Furilla. All the world loved Furilla, because things always happened the way they should for Furilla.

“Yeah,” he said again, still in a whisper.

Furilla, he reflected, never did anything to make things come her way. She did it just by being soft little, sweet little, innocent little Furilla — being Furilla beyond all flexibility, beyond all belief.

The ’phone rang.

“Yes, Joe.”

Joe said, “I don’t know just what details you want about Brill. There’s a good deal that wasn’t in the papers, though. He went on a wing-ding and disappeared for two days. They shovelled him up out of a doorway down in the waterfront district. He was full of white lightning, but whether that killed him or his pump was due to quit, anyhow, is a toss-up. That what you wanted?”

“Close. What about the other one?”

“Took a little digging. Now Hennigar — Hobart Hennigar, thirty-seven, instructor in English Lit., and creative writing at some Eastern college, thrown out three years ago for making a pass at a housemaid. Fast talker, good-looker, fairly harmless. One of these literate bums. Knocked around, one job to another, wound up out at the lake, caretaker on a big estate. Ties in with MacIver, in a way, Lance — MacIver had a place out there, too, little lodge. Used to hole up there once in a while.”

“Was he out there during his drunk?”

“If he was, no one could prove it. Off season, pretty lonesome out there. Anyway, this Hennigar got himself plugged through the head. Police report says it was a twenty-five target-type bullet.”

“Fight?”

“No! Back of the head, from a window in his cabin. He never knew what hit him, not a clue. Lance—”

“Mm?”

“You got a lead on that killing?”

DeMarcopolo looked slowly around the room. The telephone said, “Lance?” and he held it away from him and looked at it as if he had never seen it before.

Then he brought it back and said, “No, I haven’t got a lead on that killing. Joe, do something for me?”

“Shucks.”

“You covering that thing of mine?”

“Statement at the airport, kissin’ picture? Couldn’t keep me away.”

“I... won’t be there,” said deMarcopolo. “Tell her for me, will you?”

“Lance! What’s hap—”

“Thanks, Joe. ’Bye.” He hung up very quietly.

After a time he crossed to the small pile of things by the door and picked up the note she had left him and his picture. He tore up the note and took out the picture and tore it in two. He folded the frame over the torn paper and tossed it over the string marked THROW OUT. That left the new box marked WIP staring at him.

He recoiled from it with horror and went on out. Shutting the door, he said conversationally, “How innocent can you get?” He said it to MacIver, to Hennigar, to Eloise Michaud, and to Lancelot deMarcopolo. But nobody had an answer for him.

Who Shot the Duke? by Brett Halliday. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Nov 1956

To Anita — with Murder by Vic Rodell. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Nov 1956

Sunday’s Slaughter by Jonathan Craig. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Jan 1957

Blood on His Boots by Tedd Thomey. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Oct 1956

A Long Time Dying by Will Cotton. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Jan 1957

A Dress for Mary Lou by Jay Carroll. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Feb 1957

You Wash, and I’ll Dry by Charles Irving. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Sep 1956

The Deadly Innocent by Theodore Sturgeon & Don Ward. First published in Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Nov 1956

Notes

1

Ghost written by Sam Merwin, Jr.

Content

Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, August 1957 (British Edition)

Who Shot the Duke? by Brett Halliday

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

To Anita — With Murder by Vic Rodell

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

Sunday’s Slaughter by Jonathan Craig

Blood on His Boots by Tedd Thomey

A Long Time Dying by Will Cotton

A Dress for Mary Lou by Jay Carroll

You Wash, and I’ll Dry by Charles Irving

The Deadly Innocent by Theodore Sturgeon and Don Ward

Notes